-PE 


WORDS; 


THEIR  USE   AND   ABUSE, 


WILLIAM  MATHEWS,   LL.D., 

AUTHOR  OP  '•  GETTING  ON  IN  THE  WORLD,"   "  ORATORY  AND  ORATORS, 
ETC.,  ETC. 


Die  Sprache  ist  nichts  anderes  ala  der  in  die  Erscheinmig  tretende  Gedanke 
uud  beiae  sind  iuuerlicli  nur  eius  and  dasselbe.— Becker. 


CHIOCO 

SCOTT,   FORESMAX   AND  COMPANY 

1907 


Copyright,  1876, 
By  S.  C.   ORIGGS  and  COMPANY. 


COPTUIGHT,     18S4, 

By  S.  C.   GRIGGS  AND   COMPAXY. 


Language  and  thought  are  inseparable.  Words  without  thought  are  dead 
sounds;  thoughts  without  words  are  nothing.  To  think  is  to  speak  low:  to 
speak  is  to  think  aloud.    The  word  is  the  thought  incarnate.— Max  MCller 

A  winged  word  hath  struck  ineradieally  in  a  million  hearts,  and  enven. 
omed  every  hour  throughout  their  hard  pulsation.  On  a  winged  word  hath 
hung  the  destiny  of  nations.  On  a  winged  word  hath  human  wisdom  been 
willing  to  cast  the  immortal  soul,  and  to  leave  it  dei)cndent  for  all  its  future 
happiness.— W.  S.  Landou. 

Words  are  things;  and  a  small  drop  of  ink,  falling  like  dew  upon  a  thought, 
produces  that  which  makes  thousands,  perhaps  millions,  think. —  Byron. 

A  dead  language  is  full  of  all  monumental  remembrances  of  the  people  who 
spoke  it.  Their  swords  and  their  shields  are  in  it ;  their  faces  are  pictured 
on  its  walls:   and  their  very  voices   ring  still   through  its   recesses. —  B.  W. 

DWIGHT. 

Every  sentence  of  the  great  writer  is  like  an  autograph.  .  .  If  Milton  hati 
endorsed  a  bill  of  exchange  with  half-a-dozen  blank-verse  lines,  it  would  be 
as  good  as  his  name,  and  would  be  accepted  as  good  evidence  in  court. — 
Alexander  Smith. 

If  there  be  a  human  talent,  let  it  get  into  the  tongue,  and  make  melody 
with  that  organ.  The  talent  that  can  say  nothing  for  itself,  what  is  it? 
Notliing;  or  a  thing  that  can  do  mere  drudgeries,  and  at  best  make  money 
by  railways.- Carlvle. 

Human  language  may  be  polite  and  powerless  in  itself,  uplifted  with 
difficulty  into  expression  by  the  high  thoughts  it  utters,  or  it  may  in  itself 
become  so  saturated  with  warm  life  and  delicious  association  that  every 
sentence  shall  palpitate  and  thrill  with  the  mere  fascination  of  the  syllables.— 

T.  W.   HiGGINSON. 

Accustom  yourself  to  reflect  on  the  words  you  use,  hear,  or  read,  their 
birth,  derivation,  and  history.  For  if  words  are  not  tilings,  they  are  living 
powers,  by  which  the  things  of  most  importance  to  mankind  are  actuated, 
combined,  and  harmonized.— Coleridge. 

Words  possess  an  endless,  indefinable,  tantalizing  charm.  They  paint 
humanity  in  its  thouglUs,  longings,  aspirations,  struggles,  failures  —  paint  it 
upon  a  canvas  of  breath,  in  the  colors  of  life.— Anon. 

Ye  know  not  what  hurt  ye  do  to  Learning,  that  care  not  for  Words,  but 
for  Matter,  and  so  make  a  Divorce  betwixt  the  Tongue  and  the  Heart.— 
Ascuam. 

Let  him  who  would  rightly  understand  the  grandeur  and  dignity  of  speech, 
meditate  on  the  deep  mystery  involved  in  the  'cvelation  of  the  Lord  Jesus 
as  the  Word  of  God.-F.  W.  Farrar. 


Words  are  lighter  than  the  cloud  foam 

Of  the  restless  ocean  spray; 
Vainer  than  the  trembling  shadow 

That  the  next  hour  steals  away; 
By  the  fall  of  summer  rain-drops 

Is  the  air  as  deeply  stirred; 
And  the  rose  leaf  that  we  tread  on 

Will  outlive  a  word. 

Yet  on  the  dull  silence  breaking 

With  a  lightning  flash,  a  word, 
Bearing  endless  desolation 

On  its  blighting  wings,  I  heard. 
Earth  can  forge  no  keener  weapon, 

Dealing  surer  death  and  pain, 
And  the 'cruel  echo  answered 

Through  long  years  again. 

I  have  known  one  word  hang  star-like 

O'er  a  dreary  waste  of  years, 
And  it  only  shone  the  brighter 

Looked  at  through  a  mist  of  tears, 
While  a  weary  wanderer  gathered 

Hope  and  heart  on  life's  dark  way. 
By  its  faithful  promise  shining 

Clearer  day  by  day. 

I  have  known  a  spirit  calmer 

Then  the  calmest  lake,  and  clear 
As  the  heavens  that  gazed  upon  it, 

With  no  wave  of  hope  or  fear; 
But  a  storm  had  swept  across  it. 

And  its  deepest  depths  were  stirred. 
Never,  never  more  to  slumber. 

Only  by  a  word. 

Adelaide  A.  Procter. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  NEW  EDITION. 


rpiHE  unexpected  favor  with  which  this  work  has  been 
received  by  the  public  from  year  to  year,  since  its 
publication  in  1873,  has  made  the  author  anxious  to  ren- 
der it  more  worthy  of  regard.  He  has,  therefore,  care- 
fully revised  the  work,  corrected  some  errors,  and  added 
two  new  chapters,  one  on  "  Onomatopes,"  the  other  on 
"  Names  of  Men,"  besides  many  pages  on  the  subjects  of  the 
other  chapters. 

Professor  G.  P.  Marsh,  in  his  "  Lectures  on  the  English 
Language,"  quotes  the  saying  of  a  distinguished  British 
scholar  of  the  last  century,  that  he  had  known  but  three 
of  his  countrymen  who  spoke  their  native  language  with 
uniform  grammatical  accuracy;  and  the  Professor  adds 
that  "  the  observation  of  most  persons  acquainted  with 
English  and  American  societ}^  confirms  the  general  truth 
implied  in  this  declaration."  In  this  statement,  made  by 
one  of  the  most  eminent  philologists  of  the  day,  is  found, 
at  least,  a  partial  justification  of  works  like  the  present, 
if  they  are  properly  written.  The  autlior  is  well  aware 
tliat,  in  writing  such  a  book,  he  is  obnoxious  to  the  com- 
plaint of  Goethe,  that  '"  everybody  thinks  that,  because  lie 
can  S[)eak,  he  is  entitled  to  speak  about  language;"  he  is 
aware,  too,  that  in  his  criticisms  on  the  misuses  and  abuses 

of  words,  be  has  exposed  himself  to  criticism;  and  it  may 

▼U 


Vlll  rilEFACE   TO   THE    NEW    EDITION. 

be  that  he  lias  been  guilty  of  some  of  the  very  sins  wliich 
he  has  condemned.  If  so,  he  sins  in  good  company,  since 
nearly  all  of  his  predecessors,  who  have  written  on  the 
same  theme,  have  been  found  guilty  of  a  similar  incon- 
sistency, from  Lindley  Muri'ay  down  to  Dean  Alford, 
Breen,  Moon,  Marsh,  and  Fowler.  If  the  public  is  to 
hear  no  philological  sermons  till  the  preachers  are  fault- 
less, it  will  have  to  wait  forever.  "  The  only  impeccable 
authors,"  says  Hazlitt,  "  are  those  who  never  wrote." 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  that  the  work  is  designed 
for  popular  reading,  rather  than  for  scholars.  How  much 
the  author  is  indebted  to  others,  he  cannot  say.  He  has 
been  travelling,  in  his  own  way,  over  old  and  well  worn 
ground,  and  has  picked  up  his  materials  freely  from  all 
the  sources  within  his  reach.  Non  nova,  sed  nove,  has  been 
his  aim;  he  regrets  that  he  has  not  accomplished  it  more 
to  his  satisfaction.  The  world,  it  has  been  truly  said,  does 
not  need  new  thoughts  so  much  as  it  needs  that  old 
thoughts  be  recast.  There  are  some  writers,  however,  to 
whom  he  has  been  particularly  indebted;  they  are  Arch- 
bishop Trench,  the  Rev.  Matthew  Harrison,  author  of  "  The 
Rise,  Progress,  and  Present  Structure  of  the  English 
Language,"  Professor  G.  P.  Marsh,  and  especially  Arch- 
deacon F.  W.  Farrar,  the  last  of  whom  in  his  three  lin- 
guistic works  has  shown  the  ability  to  invest  the  driest 
scientific  themes  with  interest.  A  list  of  the  books  con- 
sulted will  be  found  on  pages  479,  480. 


COJSTTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 
The  Sigxificaxce  of  Words 1 

CHAPTER   II. 
The  MouALiTY  ix  Words 62 

CHAPTER   III. 
Grand  Words 105 

CHAPTER   IV. 
Small  Words    ...  139 

CHAPTER   V. 
Words  without  Meaxixg 158 

CHAPTER   VI. 
Some  Abuses  of  Words 177 

CHAPTER   VII. 
Saxox   Words,  or  RoMAKirV 104 

CHAPTER   VIII. 

The  Secret  of  Apt  Words 210 

ix 


X  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER   IX. 

The  Secret  of  Apt  Words  (continued)  .       .       .   220 

CHAPTER   X. 
Onomatopes 242 

CHAPTER    XI. 
The  Fallacies  in  Words 257 

CHAPTER   XII. 
The  Fallacies  in  Words  (continued)     ....  295 

CHAPTER   XIII. 
Names  of  Men 323 

CHAPTER   XIV. 
Nicknames 345 

CHAPTER   XV. 
Curiosities  of  Language 367 

CHAPTER  XVI. 
Common  Improprieties  of  Speech 424 

Index 481 


WORDS;  THEIR  USE  AND  ABUSE. 


CHAPTER    I. 

THE  SIGNIFICANX-E  OF  WORDS. 

"Speccli  is  morning  to  the  mind; 
It  spreads  the  beauteous  images  abroad, 
Which  else  lie  dark  and  buried  in  the  soul." 

La  parole,  cette  main  de  Tesprit.— Cuarkon. 

Syllables  govern  the  world.— Coke. 

rr^O  the  thoucjbtful  man,  who  has  reflected  on  the  com- 
-*-  mon  opei'ation.s  of  life,  which,  but  for  their  common- 
ness, would  be  deemed  full  of  marvel,  few  things  are  more 
wonderful  than  the  origin,  structure,  history  and  signifi- 
cance of  words.  The  tongue  is  the  glor^^  of  man;  for 
though  animals  have  memory,  will  and  intellect,  yet  lan- 
guage, which  gives  us  a  duplicate  and  multipliable  exist- 
ence,—  enabling  mind  to  communicate  with  mind, —  is  the 
Rubicon  which  they  never  have  dared  to  cross.  The  dog 
barks  as  it  barked  at  the  creation;  the  owl  hoots  in  the 
same  octaves  in  which  it  screamed  ages  ago;  and  the  crow 
of  the  cock  is  the  same  to-day  as  when  it  startled  the  ear 
of  repentant  Peter.  The  song  of  the  lark  and  the  howl  of 
the  leopard  have  continued  as  unchangeable  as  the  concen- 
tric circles  of  the  spider  and  the  waxen  hexagon  of  the  bee; 
and  even  the  stoutest  champion  of  the  orang-outang  the- 


2  words;  their  use  axd  abuse. 

ory  of  man's  origin  will  admit  that  no  process  of  natu- 
ral selection  lias  yet  distilled  significant  words  out  of  the 
cries  of  beasts  or  the  notes  of  birds.  Though  we  have  lit- 
tle reason  to  doubt  that  animals  think,  there  is  yet  no 
proof  that  a  single  noise  made  by  them  expresses  a 
thought,  and  especially  an  abstraction  or  a  genei'alization, 
properties  characterizing  the  language  of  man.  He  only, 
in  this  world,  is  able  to  classify  objects  which  in  some 
respects  resemble,  and  in  others  differ  from  one  another, 
and  to  analyze  and  decompound  the  various  objects  of 
thought;  and  to  him  is  limited  the  privilege  of  designat- 
ing by  arbitrary  signs,  and  describing  by  distinctive  terms, 
the  things  he  thus  comprehends.  Speech  is  a  divine  gift. 
It  is  the  last  seal  of  dignity  stamped  by  God  upon  His 
intelligent  offspring,  and  proves,  more  conclusively  than 
his  upright  form,  or  his  looks  "  commercing  with  the 
skies,"  that  he  was  made  in  the  image  of  God.  Without 
this  crowning  gift  to  man,  even  reason  would  have  been 
comparatively  valueless;  for  he  would  have  felt  himself  to 
be  imprisoned  even  when  at  large,  solitary  in  the  midst  of 
a  ci'owd;  and  the  society  of  the  wisest  of  his  race  would 
have  been  as  uninstructive  as  that  of  barbarians  and  sav- 
ages. The  I'ude  tongue  of  a  Patagonian  or  Australian  is 
full  of  wonders  to  the  philosopher;  but  as  we  ascend  in  the 
scale  of  being  from  the  uncouth  sounds  which  express 
the  desires  of  a  savage  to  the  loft)'  periods  of  a  Cicero  or  a 
Chatham,  the  power  of  words  expands  until  it  attains  to 
regions  far  above  the  utmost  range  of  our  capacity.  It 
designates,  as  Novalis  has  said,  God  with  three  letters,  and 
the  infinite  with  as  many  syllables,  though  the  ideas  con- 
veyed by  these  words  are  immeasurably  beyond  the  utmost 
grasp  of  man.     In  every  relation  of  life,  at  every  moment 


THE    SIGXIFICAXCE    OF    WORDS.  3 

of  our  active  being,  in  every  thing  we  think  or  do,  it  is  on 
the  meaning  and  inflection  of  a  word  that  the  direction  of 
our  thoughts,  and  the  expression  of  our  will,  turn.  The 
soundness  of  our  reasonings,  the  clearness  of  our  belief 
and  of  our  judgment,  the  influence  we  exert  upon  others, 
and  the  manner  in  which  we  are  impressed  by  our  fellow- 
men, —  all  depend  upon  a  knowledge  of  the  value  of  words. 
It  is  in  language  that  the  treasures  of  human  knowledge, 
the  discoveries  of  Science,  and  the  achievements  of  Art 
are  chiefly  preserved ;  it  is  language  that  furnishes  the  poet 
with  the  airy  vehicle  for  his  most  delicate  fancies,  the 
orator  with  the  elements  of  his  electrifying  eloquence, 
the  savant  with  the  record  of  his  classification,  the  meta- 
physician with  the  means  of  his  sharp  distinction,  the 
statesman  with  the  drapery  of  his  vast  design,  and  the 
philosopher  with  the  earthly  instrument  of  his  heaven- 
reaching  induction. 

"  Words,"  said  the  fierce  Mirabeau,  in  reply  to  an  oppo- 
nent in  the  National  Assembly,  "  are  things; "  and  truly 
they  were  such  when  he  thundered  them  forth  from  the 
Ti'ibune,  full  of  life,  meaning  and  power.  Words  are 
always  things,  when  coming  from  the  lips  of  a  master- 
spirit, and  instinct  with  his  own  individualit}'.  Especially 
is  this  true  of  so  impassioned  orators  as  Mirabeau,  who 
have  thoughts  impatient  for  words,  not  words  starving  for 
thoughts,  and  who  but  give  utterance  to  the  spirit  breathed 
by  the  whole  Third  Estate  of  a  nation.  Their  words  are 
not  merely  things,  but  Uvhiy  things,  endowed  with  power 
not  only  to  communicate  ideas,  but  to  convey,  as  by  spirit- 
ual conductors,  the  shock  and  thrill  which  attended  their 
birth.  Hazlitt,  fond  as  he  was  of  paradox,  did  not  exag- 
gerate when  he  said  that  "  words  are  the  only  things  that 


4  WORDS;    THEIR    USE    AXD    ABUSE. 

live  I'oiever."  History  shows  that  temples  and  palaces, 
mausoleums  and  monuments  built  at  enormous  cost  and 
during  years  of  toil  to  perpetuate  the  memory  or  preserve 
the  ashes  of  ancient  kings,  have  perished,  and  left  not  even 
a  trace  of  their  existence.  The  pyramids  of  Egypt  have, 
indeed,  escaped  in  some  degree  the  changes  and  chances  of 
thousands  of  years;  yet  an  earthquake  may  suddenly  engulf 
these  masses  of  stone,  and  "  leave  the  sand  of  the  desert  as 
blank  as  the  tide  would  have  left  it  on  the  sea  shore."  A 
sudden  accident  may  cause  the  destruction  of  the  finest 
masterpieces  of  art,  and  the  Sistine  Madonna,  the  Apollo 
Belvedere,  or  the  Venus  de  Medicis,  upon  which  millions 
have  gazed  with  rapture,  ma}"^  be  hopelessly  injured  or  irre- 
trievably ruined.  A  mob  shivers  into  dust  the  statue  of 
Minerva,  whose  lips  seemed  to  move,  and  whose  limbs 
seemed  to  breathe  under  the  flowing  robe;  a  tasteless 
director  of  the  Dresden  Gallery  removes  the  toning  of 
Correggio's  "  Notte,"  where  the  light  breaks  from  the  heav- 
enly child,  and  deprives  the  picture  of  one  of  its  fairest 
charms;  an  inferior  pencil  retouches  the  great  Vandyck  at 
Wilton,  and  destroys  the  harmony  of  its  colors;  and  though 
no  such  mishap  as  these  befall  the  product  of  the  painter's 
skill,  yet  how  often, — 

"When  a  new  world  leaps  out  at  his  commasd. 
And  ready  nature  waits  ui)on  liis  hand; 
When  the  ripe  colors  soften  and  unite, 
And  sweetly  melt  into  just  shade  and  light; 
When  mellowing  years  their  full  perfection  give 
And  each  bold  figure  just  begins  to  live. 
The  treacherous  colors  the  fair  art  betray, 
And  all  the  bright  creation  fades  away."' 

Not  SO  with  words.  The  language  which  embodies  the 
ideas  and  emotions  of  a  great  poet  or  thinker,  though 
entrusted  to  perishable  ink  and  paper,  which  a  moth  or  a 


THE    SIGN"IFICAXCE    OF    WORDS.  5 

few  drops  of  water  -may  destroy,  is  indestructible,  and, 
when  his  body  has  turned  to  dust,  he  continues  to  rule  men 
by  the  power  of  his  thought,  —  not  "  from  his  urn,"  like  a 
dead  hero  whose  deeds  only  are  remembered,  but  by  his 
very  spirit,  living,  breathing  and  speaking  in  his  works. 
Look  at  the  "  winged  words  "  of  old  Homer,  into  which  he 
breathed  the  bi'cath  of  his  own  spiritual  life;  how  long 
have  thej'^  kept  on  the  wing!  For  twenty-five  or  thirty 
centuries  they  have  maintained  their  flight  across  gulfs  of 
time  in  which  empires  have  suffered  shipwreck,  and  the 
languages  of  common  life  have  sunk  into  oblivion;  and 
they  are  still  full  of  the  life-blood  of  immortal  youth. 
"The  'Venus'  of  Apelles,  and  the  'grapes'  of  Zeuxis  have 
vanished,  and  the  music  of  Timotheus  is  gone;  but  tlie 
bowers  of  Circe  still  remain  unfaded,  and  the  '  chained 
Prometheus'  has  outlived  the  'Cupid'  of  Praxiteles,  and 
the  '  brazen  bull '  of  Perillus." 

"How  forcible,"  says  Job,  "are  right  words!"  "A 
word  fitly  spoken,"  says  Solomon,  "  is  like  apples  of  gold 
in  pictures  of  silver."  No  artificer's  hand,  however  cun- 
ning, can  contrive  a  mechanism  comparable  with  those 
masterpieces  of  ingenuity  that  may  be  wrought  by  hiin 
who  can  convey  a  great  or  noble  thought  in  apt  and  vivid 
words.  A  mosaic  of  words  may  be  made  more  beautiful 
than  any  of  inlaid  precious  stones.  Few  persons  have  duly 
estimated  the  power  of  language.  In  anatomical  museums 
one  will  sometimes  see  the  analysis  of  a  man,  —  that  is, 
the  mere  chemical  constituents,  so  much  lime,  so  much 
albumen,  so  much  phosphorus,  etc.  These  dead  substances 
fail  not  more  utterly  in  representing  a  living  man,  with 
his  mental  and  moral  force,  than  do  the  long  rows  of  words 
in  the  lexicon  of  exhibiting  the  power  with  which,  as  signs 


(j  U'OKL>S;    Tllinit    USE    AXU    ABUSE. 

of  ideas,  they  may  be  endowed.  Language  has  been  truly 
pronounced  the  armory  ol"  the  human  mind,  which  contains 
at  once  the  trophies  of  its  past  and  the  weapons  of  its 
future  conquests.  Look  at  a  Webster  or  a  Calhoun,  when 
his  mighty  enginery  of  thought  is  in  full  operation;  how 
his  words  tell  upon  his  adversary,  battering  down  the 
intrenchments  of  sophistry  like  shot  from  heavy  ordnance! 
Cannon-shot  are  very  harmless  things  when  piled  up  for 
show;  so  are  words  when  tiered  up  in  the  pages  of  a  dic- 
tionary, with  no  mind  to  select  and  send  them  home  to  the 
mark.  But  let  them  receive  the  vitalizing  touch  of  genius, 
and  how  they  leap  with  life;  with  what  tremendous  enei-gy 
are  they  endowed!  When  the  little  Corsican  bombarded 
Cadiz  at  the  distance  of  five  miles,  it  was  deemed  the  very 
triumph  of  engineering;  but  what  was  this  paltry  range  to 
that  of  words,  which  bombard  the  ages  yet  to  come? 
"  Scholars,"  says  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  "  are  men  of  peace. 
They  carry  no  arms,  but  their  tongues  are  sharper  than 
Actus  his  razors;  their  pens  carry  further  and  make  a 
louder  report  than  thunder.  I  had  rather  stand  the  shock 
of  a  basalisco  tha-n  the  fury  of  a  merciless  pen." 

The  words  which  a  man  of  genius  selects  ai'e  as  much 
his  own  as  his  thoughts.  They  are  not  the  dress,  but  the 
incarnation,  of  his  thought,  as  the  body  contains  the  soul. 
As  John  Foster  once  said,  "  his  diction  is  not  the  clothing 
of  his  sentiments,  it  is  the  skin;  and  to  alter  the  language 
would  be  to  flay  the  sentiments  alive."  Analyze  a  speech 
by  either  of  the  great  orators  I  have  just  named,  and  a 
critical  study  will  satisfy  you  that  the  crushing  force  of 
his  arguments  lies  not  le<>;s  in  the  nicety  and  skill  with 
which  the  words  are  chosen,  than  in  the  granite-like 
strength   of    his   thought.      Attempt   to   substitute    other 


THE    SIGN'IFICAXCE    OF    WORDS.  7 

words  foi'  those  that  are  used,  and  you  will  find  that  the 
latter  are  part  and  parcel  of  the  speaker's  mind  and  con- 
ception; that  every  woi*d  is  accommodated  with  marvellous 
exactness  to  all  the  sinuosities  of  the  thought;  that  not 
even  the  most  insignificant  term  can  be  changed  without 
marring  the  force  and  completeness  of  the  author's  idea. 
If  any  other  words  can  be  used  than  those  which  a  writer 
does  use,  he  is  a  bungling  rhetorician,  and  skims  only  the 
surface  of  his  theme.  True  as  this  is  of  the  best  prose, 
it  is  doubly  true  of  the  best  poetry;  it  is  a  linked  strain 
throughout.  It  has  been  said  by  one  who  was  himself  a 
consummate  master  of  language,  that  if,  in  the  recollection 
of  any  passage  of  Shakespeare,  a  woi'd  shall  escape  your 
memory,  you  may  hunt  through  the  forty  thousand  words 
in  the  language,  and  not  one  shall  fit  the  vacant  place  but 
that  which  the  poet  put  there.  Though  he  uses  only  the 
simplest  and  homeliest  terms,  yet  "you  might  as  well 
think,"  says  Coleridge,  "  of  pushing  a  brick  out  of  a  wall 
with  your  forefinger,  as  attempt  to  remove  a  word  out  of 
any  of  the  finished  passages  of  Shakespeare." 

Who  needs  to  be  told  how  much  the  wizard  sorcery  of 
Milton  depends  on  the  words  he  uses?  It  is  not  in  what 
he  directly  tells  us  that  his  spell  lies,  but  in  the  immense 
suggestiveness  of  his  verse.  In  Homer,  it  has  been  justly 
said,  thei'e  are  no  hidden  meanings,  no  deeps  of  thought 
into  which  the  soul  descends  for  lingering  contemplation; 
no  words  which  are  key-notes,  awakening  the  spirit's 
melodies, — 

"Untwisting all  the  links  that  tie 
The  hidden  soul  of  harmony." 

But  here  is  the  realm  of  Milton's  mastery.  He  electrifies 
the   mind   through   conductors.      His   words,   as  Macaulay 


8  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

declares,  are  charmed.  Tlieir  meaning  bears  no  proportion 
to  their  effect.  "  No  sooner  are  they  pronounced,  than  the 
past  is  present  and  the  distant  near.  New  forms  of  beauty 
start  at  once  into  existence,  and  all  the  burial  places  of  the 
memory  give  up  their  dead.  Change  the  structure  of  the 
sentence,  substitute  one  synonym  for  another,  and  the 
whole  effect  is  destroyed.  The  spell  loses  its  power;  and 
he  who  should  then  hope  to  conjure  with  it  would  find 
himself  as  much  mistaken  as  Cassim  in  the  Arabian  tale, 
when  he  stood  crying  '  Open  Wheat,'  '  Open  Barley,'  to  the 
door  which  obeyed  no  sound  but  '  Open  Sesame.' " 

The  force  and  significance  which  Milton  can  infuse  into 
the  simplest  word  are  strikingly  shown  in  his  description 
of  the  largest  of  land  animals,  in  "  Paradise  Lost."  In  a 
single  line  the  unwieldy  monster  is  so  represented  as  com- 
ing from  the  ground,  that  we  almost  involuntarily  start 
aside  from  fear  of  being  crushed  by  the  living  mass: — 

"Behemoth,  the  biggest  born  of  earth,  upheaved 
His  vastness." 

Note,  again,  that  passage  in  which  Death  at  hell-gates 
threatens  the  Arch-Fiend,  Satan: — 

"Back  to  thy  punishment, 
False  fugitive  1  and  to  thy  speed  add  wings, 
Lest  with  a  whip  of  scorpions  I  pursue 
Tliy  lingering, —  or,  with  one  stroke  of  this  dart. 
Strange  horror  seize  thee,  and  pangs  unfelt  before!" 

"  The  hand  of  a  master,"  says  Montgomery,  "  is  felt  through 
every  movement  of  this  sentence,  especially  towai'd  the 
close,  where  it  seems  to  grapple  with  the  throat  of  the 
reader;  the  hard  staccato  stops  that  well  might  take  the 
breath,  in  attempting  to  pronounce  '  or,  with  one  stroke  of 
this  dart,'  are  followed  by  an  explosion  of  sound  in  the  last 


THE    SIGNIFICANCE    OF    WORDS.  9 

line,  like  a  heavy  discharge  of  artillery,  in  which,  though  a 
full  syllable  is  interpolated  even  at  the  caesural  pause,  it  is 
carried  off  almost  without  the  reader  perceiving  the  sur- 
plusage." No  poet  better  understood  than  Milton  the  art 
of  heightening  the  majesty  of  his  strains  by  an  occasional 
sacrifice  of  their  harmony.  By  substituting  quantities  for 
accented  verse,  he  produces  an  effect  like  that  of  the  skilful 
organist  who  throws  into  the  full  tide  of  instrumental 
music  an  occasional  discord,  giving  intenser  sweetness  to 
the  notes  that  follow. 

It  is  this  necromantic  power  over  language, —  this  skill 
in  striking  "  the  electric  chain  with  which  we  are  darkly 
bound,"  till  its  vibrations  thrill  along  the  chords  of  the 
heart,  and  its  echoes  ring  in  all  the  secret  chambers  of  the 
soul, —  which  blinds  us  to  the  absurdities  of  "Paradise 
Lost."  While  following  this  mighty  magician  of  language 
through 

"many  a  winding  bout 


Of  linked  sweetness  long  drawn  out," 

we  overlook  the  incongruity  with  which  he  makes  angels 
fight  with  "  villanous  saltpetre "  and  divinities  talk  Cal- 
vinism, puts  the  subtleties  of  Greek  syntax  into  the  mouth 
of  Eve,  and  exhibits  the  Omnipotent  Father  arguing  like  a 
school  divine.  As  with  Milton,  so  with  his  great  prede- 
cessor, Dante.  Wondrous  as  is  his  power  of  creating  pic- 
tures in  a  few  lines,  he  owes  it  mainly  to  the  directness, 
simplicity,  and  intensity  of  his  language.  In  him  "  the  in- 
visible becomes  visible;  darkness  becomes  palpable;  silence 
describes  a  character;  a  word  acts  as  a  flash  of  lightning, 
which  displays  some  gloomy  neighborhood  where  a  tower 
is  standing,  with  dreadful  faces  at  the  window." 

The  difference  in  the  use  of  words  by  different  writers 


10  WORDS;    THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

is  as  great  as  that  in  the  use  of  paints  by  great  and  poor 
artists;  and  there  is  as  great  a  difference  in  the  effect  upon 
the  understanding  and  the  sensibilities  of  their  readers. 
Who  that  is  familiar  with  Bacon's  writings  can  ever  fail  to 
recognize  one  of  his  sentences,  so  dense  with  pith,  and 
going  to  the  mark  as  if  from  a  gun?  In  him,  it  has  been  • 
remarked,  language  was  always  the  flexible  and  obedient 
instrument  of  the  thought;  not,  as  in  the  productions  of  a 
lower  order  of  mind,  its  rebellious  and  recalcitrant  slave. 
"All  authors  below  the  highest  seem  to  use  the  mighty  gift 
of  expi'ession  with  a  certain  secret  timidity,  lest  the  lever 
should  prove  too  ponderous  for  the  hand  that  essays  to 
wield  it;  or  rather,  they  resemble  the  rash  student  in  the 
old  legend,  who  was  overmastered  by  the  demons  which  he 
had  unguardedly  provoked."  Who  that  is  familiar  with 
Dryden's  "  full,  resounding  line,"  has  not  admired  the  magic 
effects  he  produces  with  the  most  familiar  words?  Macau- 
lay  well  says  that  in  the  management  of  the  scientific 
vocabulary  he  succeeded  as  completely  as  his  contemporary. 
Gibbons,  succeeded  in  carving  the  most  delicate  flowers 
from  heart  of  oak.  The  toughest  and  most  knotty  parts  of 
language  became  ductile  at  his  touch.  Emerson,  in  speak- 
ing of  the  intense  vitality  of  Montaigne's  words,  says  that 
if  you  cut  them,  they  will  bleed.  Joubert,  in  revealing 
the  secret  of  Rousseau's  charm,  says:  "He  imparted,  if  I 
may  so  speak,  hoivels  of  feeling  to  the  words  he  used  {donna 
des  entrailles  (I  tons  les  mots),  and  poured  into  them  such  a 
charm,  sweetness  so  penetrating,  energy  so  puissant,  that 
his  writings  have  an  effect  upon  the  soul  something  like 
that  of  those  illicit  pleasures  which  steal  away  our  taste 
and  intoxicate  our  understanding."  So  in  the  weird  poetic 
fictions  of  Coleridge  there  is  an  indescribable  witchery  of 


THE   SIGNIFICAXCE   OF   WORDS.  11 

phrase  and  conceit  that  affects  the  imagination  as  if  one 
had  eaten  of  "  the  insane  I'oot  that  takes  the  reason 
prisoner." 

How  much  is  the  magic  of  Tennyson's  verse  due  to 
"  the  fitting  of  aptest  words  to  things,"  which  we  find  on 
every  page  of  his  poetry!  He  has  not  only  the  vision, 
but  the  faculty  divine,  and  no  secret  of  his  art  is  hid  from 
Iiim.  Foot  and  pause,  rhyme  and  rliythm,  alliteration; 
subtle,  penetrative  words  that  touch  the  very  quick  of  the 
truth ;  cunning  words  that  have  a  spell  in  them  for  the 
memory  and  the  imagination;  old  words,  with  their  weird 
influence, 

"Briglit  through  tlic  rubbish  of  some  hundred  years," 

and  words  used  for  the  occasion  in  their  primai"y  sense,  are 
all  his  ministers,  and  obedient  to  his  will.  An  American 
writer,  Mr.  E.  C.  Stedman,  in  speaking  of  Swinburne's 
marvellous  gift  of  melody,  asks:  "  Who  taught  him  all  the 
hidden  springs  of  melody?  He  was  born  a  tamer  of  words, 
a  subduer  of  this  most  stubborn,  yet  most  copious  of  the 
literary  tongues.  In  his  poetry  we  discover  qualities  we 
did  not  know  were  in  the  language —  a  softness  that  stemed 
Italian,  a  rugged  strength  we  thought  was  German,  a  blithe 
and  debonair  lightness  we  despaired  of  capturing  from  the 
French.  He  has  added  a  score  of  new  stops  and  pedals  to 
the  instrument.  He  has  introduced,  partly  from  other 
tongues,  stanzaic  forms,  measures  and  effects  untried  before, 
and  has  brought  out  the  swiftness  and  force  of  metres  like 
the  anapestic,  can-ying  each  to  perfection  at  a  single  trial. 
Words  in  his  hands  are  like  the  ivory  balls  of  a  juggler, 
and  all  words  seem  to  be  in  his  hands." 

Words,  with  such  men,  are  "nimble  and  airy  servitors," 
not  masters,  and  from  the  exquisite  skill  with  which  they 


12  words;  their  use  axd  abuse. 

are  chosen,  and  the  firmness  with  which  they  are  knit 
together,  are  sometimes  "  half  battles,  stronger  than  most 
men's  deeds."  What  is  the  secret  of  the  weird-like  power 
of  De  Quincey?  Is  it  not  that,  of  all  late  English  writers, 
he  has  the  most  imperial  dominion  over  the  resources  of 
expression;  that  he  has  weighed,  as  in  a  hair-balance,  the 
precise  significance  of  every  word  he  uses;  that  he  has 
conquered  so  completely  the  stubbornness  of  our  vernacular 
as  to  render  it  a  willing  slave  to  all  the  whims  and  caprices, 
the  ever-shifting,  kaleidoscopic  variations  of  his  thought? 
Turn  to  whatever  page  you  will  of  his  writings,  and  it  is 
not  the  thorough  grasp  of  his  subject,  the  enormous  erudi- 
tion, the  extraordinary  breadth  and  piercing  acuteness  of 
intellect  which  he  displays,  that  excite  your  greatest  sur- 
prise; but  you  feel  that  here  is  a  man  who  has  gauged  the 
potentiality  of  every  word  he  uses,  who  has  analyzed  the 
simples  of  his  eveiy  compound  phrase.  In  his  hands  our 
stiff  Saxon  language  becomes  almost  as  ductile  as  the  Greek. 
Ideas  that  seem  to  defy  expression, —  ideas  so  subtile,  or  so 
vague  and  shifting,  that  most  thinkers  find  it  difficult  to 
conteirtplate  them  at  all, —  are  conveyed  on  his  page  with  a 
nicety,  a  felicity  of  phrase,  that  might  almost  provoke  the 
envy  of  Shakespeare.  In  the  hands  of  a  great  sculptor 
marble  and  bronze  become  as  soft  and  elasfic  as  living  flesh, 
and  not  unlike  this  is  the  dominion  which  the  great  writers 
possess  over  language.  In  their  verse  our  rugged  but  pithy 
and  expressive  English   breathes  all  sounds,  all   melodies; 

"  And  now  'tis  like  all  instnimcnts, 
Now  like  a  lonely  flute, 
And  now  it  is  an  angel's  song, 
That  makes  the  heavens  be  mute." 

The  superiority  of  the  writers  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 


THE    SIGXIFICAXCE    OF    WORDS.  13 

tury  to  those  of  our  own  day  is  due  not  less  to  their 
choice  and  collocation  of  words  than  to  their  weight  of 
thought.  There  was  no  writing  public  nor  reading  popu- 
lace in  that  age;  the  writers  were  few  and  intellectual, 
and  they  addressed  themselves  to  learned,  or,  at  least,  to 
studious  and  thoughtful  readers.  "  The  structure  of  their 
language,"  says  Henry  Taylor,  "  is  itself  an  evidence  that 
they  counted  upon  another  frame  of  mind,  and  a  different 
pace  and  speed  in  reading,  from  that  which  can  alone  be 
looked  to  by  the  writers  of  these  days.  Their  books  were 
not  written  to  be  snatched  up,  run  through,  talked  over, 
and  forgotten;  and  their  diction,  therefore,  was  not  such 
as  lent  wings  to  haste  and  impatience,  making  every- 
thing so  clear  that  he  who  ran  or  flew  might  read. 
Rather  was  it  so  constructed  as  to  detain  the  reader  over 
what  was  pregnant  and  profound,  and  compel  him  to  that 
brooding  and  prolific  posture  of  mind  by  which,  if  he 
had  wings,  they  might  help  him  to  some  more  genial 
and  profitable  employment  than  that  of  running  like  an 
ostrich  through  a  desert.  And  hence  those  characteristics 
of  diction  by  which  these  writers  are  made  more  fit  than 
those  who  have  followed  them  to  train  the  ear  and  utter- 
ance of  a  poet.  For  if  we  look  at  the  long-suspended 
sentences  of  those  days,  with  all  tlieir  convolutions  and 
intertextures, —  the  many  parts  waiting  for  the  ulliinate 
wholeness, —  we  sliall  [lercoive  that  without  distinctive 
movement  and  rhythmical  significance  of  a  very  high 
order,  it  would  be  impossible  that  they  could  be  sustained 
in  any  sort  of  clearness.  C)no  of  those  writers'  sentences 
is  often  in  itself  a  work  of  art,  Iiaving  its  strophes  and 
antistrophcs,  its  winding  changes  and  recalls,  by  whicli 
the  reader,  though  conscious  of  plural  voices  and  I'unning 


14  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

divisions  of  thought,  is  not,  however,  permitted  to  disso- 
ciate them  from  their  mutual  concert  and  dependency,  but 
required,  on  the  contrary,  to  give  them  entrance  into  his 
mind,  opening  it  wide  enough  for  the  purpose,  as  one 
compacted  and  harmonious  fabric.  Sentences  thus  elab- 
orately constructed,  and  complex,  though  musical,  are  not 
easy  to  a  remiss  reader,  but  they  are  clear  and  delightful 
to  an  intent  reader." 

Few  persons  are  aware  how  much  knowledge  is  some- 
times necessary  to  give  the  etymolog}''  and  definition  of  a 
word.  In  1839  the  British  Court  of  Queen's  Bench, —  Sir 
F.  Pollock,  Mr.  Justice  Coleridge,  the  Attorney  General, 
Sir  J.  Campbell,  and  other  learned  lawyers, —  disputed  for 
some  hours  about  the  meaning  of  the  word  "  upon,"'  as  a 
preposition  of  time;  whether  it  meant  "after''  or  "be- 
fore." It  is  easy  to  define  words  as  certain  persons  sati- 
rized by  Pascal  have  defined  light:  "  A  luminary  movement 
of  luminous  bodies";  or  as  a  Western  judge  once  defined 
murder  to  a  jury:  "Murder,  gentlemen,  is  when  a  man  is 
murderously  killed.  It  is  the  imirdering  that  constitutes 
murder  in  the  eye  of  the  law.  Murder,  in  short,  is  — 
murder."  We  have  all  smiled  at  Johnson's  definition  of 
nettvork:  "Network  —  anything  reticulated  or  decussed  at 
equal  distances,  with  interstices  between  the  intersections." 
Many  of  the  definitions  in  our  dictionaries  remind  one  of 
Bardolph's  attempt  to  anah'ze  the  term  accominoclafion: 
"  Accommodation, —  that  is,  when  a  man  is,  as  they  sa}-, 
accommodated;  or  when  a  man  is  being  whereby  he 
may  be  thought  to  be  accommodated,  which  is  an  excel- 
lent thing."  Brimsione,  for  example,  the  lexicographer 
defines  by  telling  us  that  it  is  sulphur;  and  then  rewards 
us   for  the   trouble  we  have  had  in    turning   to  sulj^hur, 


THE    SIGNIFICAXCE    OF    WORDS.  15 

by  telling  us  that  it  is  brimstone.  The  eccentric  Diivy 
Crockett,  whose  exterior  roughness  veiled  a  great  deal 
of  mother  wit,  happily  characterized  this  whole  tribe  of 
lexicographers  by  a  remark  he  once  made  to  a  Western 
member  of  Congress.  When  the  latter,  in  a  speech  on  a 
bill  for  increasing  the  number  of  hospitals,  wearied  his 
hearers  by  incessant  repetition, —  "Sit  down,"  whispered 
Crockett,  "you  are  coming  out  of  the  same  hole  you 
went  in  at."'  There  is  a  mythical  stor}^  that  the  forty 
members  of  the  French  Academy  once  undertook  to  define 
the  word  crah,  and  hit  upon  this,  which  they  deemed  quite 
satisfactory:  "Crab, —  a  small  red  fish,  which  walks  back- 
ward." "  Perfect,  gentlemen,"  said  Cuvier,  when  inter- 
rogated touching  the  correctness  of  the  definition;  "per- 
fect,—  only  I  will  make  one  small  observation  in  natural 
history.  The  crab  is  not  a  fish,  it  is  not  red,  and  it  does  not 
walk  backward.  With  these  exceptions,  your  definition  is 
admirable."  Too  many  easily  made  definitions  are  liable  to 
similar  damaging  exceptions. 

The  truth  is,  no  word  can  be  truly  defined  until  the 
exact  idea  is  understood,  in  all  its  relations,  which  the  word 
is  designed  to  represent.  Let  a  man  undertake  to  define 
the  word  "  alkali "  or  "  acid,"  for  instance,  and  he  will 
have  to  encounter  some  pretty  hard  problems  in  chemistry. 
Lavoisier,  the  author  of  the  terminology  of  modern  chem- 
istry, tells  us  that  when  he  undertook  to  form  a  nomencla- 
ture of  that  science,  and  while  he  proposed  to  himself 
nothing  more  than  to  improve  the  chemical  language,  his 
work  transformed  itself  by  degrees,  and  without  his  being 
able  to  prevent  it,  into  a  treatise  upon  the  elements  of 
chemistry.  Often  a  theory  or  an  argument,  which  seems 
clear  and  convincing  in  its  disembodied  form,  is  found  to  be 


16  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

incoherent  and  altogether  unsatisfactory  as  soon  as  it  is 
fixed  in  words  on  paper.  Samuel  Bailey,  who  held  a  deriv- 
ative opinion  in  favor  of  Berkeley's  "  Theory  of  Vision," 
tells  us  that  having,  in  the  course  of  a  philosophical  discus- 
sion, occasion  to  explain  it,  he  found,  on  attempting  to 
state  in  his  oini  languarje  the  grounds  on  which  it  rested, 
that  they  no  longer  appeared  to  him  to  be  so  clear  and 
conclusive  as  he  had  fancied  them  to  be.  He  determined, 
therefore,  to  make  them  the  subject  of  a  patient  and  dis- 
passionate examination;  and  the  result  was  a  clear  convic- 
tion of  the  erroneousness  of  Berkeley's  theory,  the  philo- 
sophical grounds  for  which  conviction  he  has  so  ably  and 
luminously  set  forth  in  his  book  on  the  subject.  The  truth 
is,  accurate  definitions  of  the  terms  of  any  science  can  only 
follow  accurate  and  sharply  defined  notions  of  the  science 
itself.  Try  to  define  the  words  matter,  substance,  idea,  will, 
cause,  conscience,  virtue,  right,  and  you  will  soon  ascertain 
whether  you  have  grappled  with  the  grand  problems  or 
only  skimmed  the  superficies  of  metaphysics  and  ethics. 
Daniel  O'Connell  once  won  a  law-suit  by  the  knowledge 
furnished  him  of  the  etymology  of  a  word.  He  was  en- 
gaged in  a  case  where  the  matter  at  issue  was  certain  river- 
rights,  especially  touching  a  branch  of  the  stream  known 
by  the  name  of  the  "Lax  Weir."  His  clients  were  in  pos- 
session of  rights  formerly  possessed  by  a  defunct  salmon- 
fishing  company,  formed  by  strangers  from  Denmark,  and 
they  claimed  the  privilege  of  obstructing  the  "Lax  Weir" 
for  the  purposes  of  their  fishery,  while  the  opposite  party 
contended  that  it  should  be  open  to  navigation.  A  natural 
inference  from  the  name  of  the  piece  of  water  in  question 
seemed  to  turn  the  scale  against  O'Connell;  for  how  could 
he  establish  the  right  to  make  that  a  close  weir  which,  ever 


THE   SIGXIFICANCE    OF    WORDS.  17 

since  the  first  existence  of  the  fishery,  had  been  notoriously 
a  lax  one?  His  cause  seemed  desperate,  and  he  had  given 
up  all  hope  of  success,  when  victory  was  wrested  from  his 
adversaries  by  a  couple  of  lines  on  a  scrap  of  paper  that 
was  handed  to  him  across  the  court.  These  lines  infor;ned 
him  that  in  the  language  of  Germany,  and  the  north  of 
Europe,  lachs,  or  lax,  means  a  salmon.  The  "Lax  Weir" 
was  simply  a  salmon  weir.  By  the  aid  of  this  bit  of  philo- 
logical knowledge,  O'Connell  won  not  only  a  verdict  for  his 
client,  but  for  himself  a  great  and  sudden  growth  of  his 
reputation  as  a  young  advocate. 

Let  no  one,  then,  underrate  the  importance  of  the 
study  of  words.  Daniel  Webster  was  often  seen  absorbed 
in  the  study  of  an  English  dictionary.  Lord  Chatham  read 
the  folio  dictionary  of  Bailey  twice  through,  examining 
each  word  attentively,  dwelling  on  its  peculiar  import  and 
modes  of  construction,  and  thus  endeavoring  to  bring  the 
whole  range  of  our  language  completeh'  under  his  control. 
One  of  the  most  distinguished  American  authors  is  said 
to  be  in  the  habit  of  reading  the  dictionary  through 
about  once  a  year.  His  choice  of  fresh  and  forceful  terms 
has  provoked  at  times  the  charge  of  pedantry;  but,  in 
fact,  he  has  but  fearlessly  used  the  wealth  of  the  language 
that  lies  buried  in  the  pages  of  Noah  Webster.  It  is  only 
by  thus  working^ in  the  mines  of  language  that  one  can 
fill  his  storehouses  of  expression,  •  so  as  to  be  above  the 
necessity  of  using  cheap  and  common  words,  or  even  using 
these  with  no  subtle  discrimination  of  their  meanings. 
William  Pinkney.  the  great  American  advocate,  studied 
the  English  language  profoundly,  nol  so  much  to  ac(|naint 
himself  with  the  nice  distinctions  of  its  i)hilos()pliiL'al 
terms,  as  to  acquire  coiuousness,  variety,  and  splendor  of 


18'  words;  their  i:se  and  abuse. 

expression.  He  studied  tlie  dictionary,  page  after  page, 
content  with  notliing  less  tlian  a  mastery  of  the  whole 
language,  as  a  body  of  expression,  in  its  primitive  and 
derivative  stock.  Rufus  Choatc  once  said  to  one  of  his 
students;  "You  don't  want  a  diction  gathered  from  the 
newspapers,  caught  from  the  air^  common  and  unsug- 
gestive;  but  you  want  one  whose  every  word  is  full- 
freighted  with  suggestion  and  association,  with  beauty  and 
power."  The  leading  languages  of  the  world  are  full  of 
such  words,  "  opulent,  microcosmic,  in  which  histories  are 
imaged,  which  record  civilizations.  Others  recall  to  us 
great  passages  of  eloquence,  or  of  noble  poetry,  and 
bring  in  their  train  the  whole  splendor  of  such  passages, 
when  they  are  uttered." 

Mr.  Disraeli  says  of  Canning,  that  he  had  at  command 
the  largest  possible  number  of  terms,  both  "  rich  and 
rare," — words  most  vivid  and  effective, —  really  spirit- 
stirring  words;  for  words  there  are,  as  every  poet  knows, 
whose  sound  is  an  echo  to  the  sense, —  words  which,  while 
by  their  literal  meaning  they  convey  an  idea  to  the  mind, 
have  also  a  sound  and  an  association  which  are  like  music 
to  the  ear,  and  a  picture  to  the  eye, —  vivid,  graphic,  and 
picturesque  words,  that  make  you  almost  see  the  thing 
described.  It  is  said  of  Keats,  that  when  reading  Chaucer, 
Spenser,  and  Milton,  he  became  a  critic  of  their  thoughts, 
their  words,  their  rhymes,' and  their  cadences.  He  brooded 
over  fine  phrases  like  a  lover;  and  often,  when  he  met  a 
quaint  or  delicious  word  in  the  course  of  his  reading,  he 
would  take  pains  to  make  it  his  own  by  using  it,  as 
speedily  as  possible,  in  some  poem  he  was  writing.  Upon 
expressions  like  "the  sea-shouldering  whale"  of  Spenser, 
he  would  dwell  with  an  ecstasy  of  delight.     It  is  said  of 


THE   SIGNIFICANCE    OF    WORDS.  19 

Theophile  Gautier,  whose  language  is  remarkable  for  its 
copiousness  and  splendor,  that  he  enriched  his  picturesque 
vocabulary  from  the  most  recondite  sources,  and  that  his 
favorite  reading  was  the  dictionary.  He  loved  words  for 
themselves,  their  look,  their  aroma,  their  color,  and  kept 
a  supply  of  them  constantly  on  hand,  which  he  introduced 
at  effective  points. 

The  question  has  been  often  discussed  whether,  if  man 
were  deprived  of  articulate  speech,  he  would  still  be  able 
to  think,  and  to  express  his  thought.  The  example  of  the 
deaf  and  dumb,  who  evidently  think,  not  by  associations  of 
sound,  but  of  touch, —  using  combinations  of  finger-speech, 
instead  of  words,  as  the  symbols  of  their  thought, —  appears 
to  show  that  he  might  find  a  partial  substitute  for  his 
present  means  of  reflection.  The  telegraph  and  railway 
signals  are,  in  fact,  new  modes  of  speech,  which  are  quickly 
familiarized  by  practice.  The  engine  driver  shuts  off  the 
steam  at  the  warning  signal,  without  thinking  of  the  words 
to  which  it  is  equivalent;  a  particular  signal  becomes  asso- 
ciated with  a  particular  act,  and  the  interposition  of  words 
becomes  useless.  It  is  well  known  that  persons  skilled  in 
gesticulation  can  communicate  by  it  a  long  series  of  facts 
and  even  complicated  trains  of  thought.  Koscius,  the 
Roman  actor,  claimed  that  he  could  express  a  sentiment 
in  a  greater  variety  of  ways  by  significant  gestures  than 
Cicero  could  by  language.  During  the  reign  of  Augustus, 
both  tragedies  and  comedies  were  acted,  with  powerful 
effect,  by  pantomime  alone.  When  the  Megarians  wanted 
help  from  the  Spartans,  and  threw  down  an  empty  meal- 
bag  before  the  assembly,  declaring  that  "  it  lacked  meal," 
these  verbal  economists  said  that  "  the  mention  of  the  sack 
was  superfluous."     When  the  Scythian  ambassadors  wished 


20  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

to  convince  Darius  of  the  hopelessness  of  invading  their 
country,  they  made  no  long  harangue,  but  argued  with  far 
more  cogency  by  merel}'  bringing  him  a  bird,  a  mouse,  a 
frog,  and  two  arrows,  to  imply  that  unless  he  could  soar 
like  a  bird,  burrow  like  a  mouse,  and  hide  in  the  marshes 
like  a  frog,  he  would  never  be  able  to  escape  their  shafts. 
Every  one  has  heard  of  the  Englishman  in  China,  who, 
wishing  to  know  the  contents  of  a  dish  which  lay  before 
him,  asked  "Quack,  quack?"  and  received  in  reply  the 
words  "  Bow-wow."  The  language  of  gesture  is  so  well 
understood  in  Italy  that  it  is  said  that  when  King  Ferdi- 
nand returned  to  Naples  after  the  revolutionary  move- 
ments of  1822,  he  made  an  address  to  the  lazzaroni  from 
the  balcony  of  the  palace,  wholly  by  signs;  and  though 
made  amidst  the  most  tumultuous  shouts,  they  were  per- 
fectly intelligible  to  the  assemblage.  It  is  traditionally 
affirmed  that  the  famous  conspiracy  of  the  Sicilian  Vespers 
was  organized  wholly  by  facial  signs,  not  even  the  hand 
being  employed.  Energetic  and  faithful,  however,  as  ges- 
ture is  as  a  means  of  expression,  it  is  in  the  domain  of 
feeling  and  persuasion,  and  for  embellishing  and  enforcing 
our  ordinary  language,  that  it  is  chiefly  useful.  The  con- 
ventionality of  language,  which  can  be  parroted  where  there 
is  little  thought  or  feeling,  deprives  it  in  man}^  cases  of  its 
force;  and  it  is  a  common  remai'k  that  a  look,  a  tone,  or 
a  gesture  is  often  more  eloquent  than  the  most  elaborate 
speech.  But  it  is  only  the  most  general  facts  of  a  situation 
that  gesture  can  express;  it  is  incapable  of  distinguishing 
or  decomposing  them,  and  utterl}^  fails  to  express  the  del- 
icate shades  of  difference  of  which  verbal  expression  is 
capable.  Natural  expression,  from  the  cry  and  groan,  and 
laugh  and  smile,  up  to  the  most  delicate  variations  of  tone 


THE    SIGNIFICANCE    OF    WORDS.  21 

and  feature  which  the  elocutionist  uses,  is  emotional,  sub- 
jective, and  cannot  convey  an  intellectual  conception,  a 
judgment,  or  a  cognition. 

Facts  like  these  tend  to  show  that  man  might  still  have 
been,  as  the  root  of  the  word  "  man  "  implies  in  Sanskrit, 
"  a  thinking  being,"  though  he  had  never  been  a  "  speech- 
dividing"  being;  but  it  is  evident  that  his  range  of  thought 
would  have  been  exceedingly  narrow,  and  that  his  migh- 
tiest triumphs  over  nature  would  have  been  impossible. 
While  it  may  be  true,  as  Tennyson  says,  that 

"  Thought  leapt  out  to  wed  with  thought, 
Ere  thought  could  wed  itself  to  speech," 

yet  there  is  an  intimate  relation  between  ratio  and  ora- 
tio,  and  it  may  well  be  doubted  whether,  without  some 
signs,  verbal  or  of  _  another  sort,  thought,  except  of  the 
simplest  kind,  would  not  have  been  beyond  man's  power. 
Long  use  has  so  familiarized  us  with  language,  we  employ 
it  so  readily,  and  without  conscious  effort,  that  we  are  apt 
to  regard  it  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  become  blind  to  its 
mystery  and  deep  significance.  We  rarely  think  of  the 
long  and  changeful  history  through  which  each  word  we 
utter  has  passed,  —  of  the  many  changes  in  form  and 
changes  in  signification  it  has  undergone,  —  and  of  the 
time  and  toil  spent  in  its  invention  and  elaboration  b}' 
successive  generations  of  thinkers  and  speakers.  Still  less 
do  we  think  how  difi"erent  man's  history  would  have  been, 
how  comparatively  useless  would  have  been  all  his  other 
endowments,  had  God  not  given  him  the  faculties  "  which, 
out  of  the  shrieks  of  birds  in  the  forest,  the  roar  of  beasts, 
the  murmur  of  rushing  waters,  the  sighing  of  the  wind, 
and  his  own  impulsive  ejaculations,  have  constructed  the 
great  instrument  that  Demosthenes,  and  Shakespeare,  and 


22  words;  their  ise  axd  abuse. 

Massillon  wielded,  the  instrument  by  which  the  laws  of 
the  universe  are  unfolded,  and  the  subtle  workings  of  the 
human  heart  brought  to  light."  Language  is  not  only  a 
means  of  communication  between  man  and  man,  but  it  has 
other  functions  hardly  less  important.  It  is  only  by  its 
aid  that  we  are  able  to  analyze  our  complex  impressions, 
to  preserve  the  results  of  the  analysis,  and  to  abbreviate 
the  processes  of  thought. 

Were  we  content  with  the  bare  reception  of  visual 
impressions,  we  could  to  some  extent  dispense  with  words; 
but  as  the  mind  does  not  receive  its  impressions  passively, 
but  reflects  upon  them,  decomposes  them  into  their  parts, 
and  compares  them  with  notions  already  stored  up,  it 
becomes  necessary  to  give  to  each  of  these  elements  a  name. 
By  virtue  of  these  names  we  are  able  to  keep  them  apart 
in  the  mind,  and  to  recall  them  with  precision  and  facility, 
just  as  the  chemist  by  the  labels  on  his  jars,  or  the  gar- 
dener by  those  on  his  flower-pots,  is  enabled  to  identify  the 
substances  these  vessels  contain.  Thus  reflections  which 
when  past  might  have  been  dissipated  forever,  are  by  their 
connection  with  language  brought  always  within  reach. 
Who  can  estimate  the  amount  of  investigation  and  thought 
which  are  represented  by  such  words  as  gravitation,  chem- 
ical affinity ,  atomic  iceight,  capital,  inverse  proportio}t,  polar- 
ity, and  inertia,  —  words  which  are  each  the  quintessence 
and  final  result  of  an  infinite  number  of  anterior  mental 
processes,  and  which  may  be  compared  to  the  paper  money, 
or  bills  of  exchange,  by  which  the  world's  wealth  may  be 
inclosed  in  envelopes  and  sent  swiftly  to  the  farthest  cen- 
tres of  commerce?  Who  can  estimate  the  inconvenience 
that  would  result,  and  the  degree  in  which  mental  activity 
would  be  arrested,  were  we  compelled  to  do  without  these 


THE   SIGXIFICAXCE    OF    WORDS.  23 

comprehensive  words  which  epitoiiiize  theories,  sum  up  the 
labors  of  the  past,  and  facilitate  and  abridge  future  mental 
processes?  The  eft'ect  would  be  to  restrict  all  scientific 
discovery  as  effectually  as  commerce  and  exchange  would 
be  restricted,  if  all  transactions  had  to  be  carried  on  with 
iron  or  copper  as  the  sole  medium  of  mercantile  inter- 
course. 

Language  has  thus  an  educational  value,  for  in  learning 
words  we  are  learning  to  discriminate  things.  "  As  the 
distinctions  between  the  I'elations  of  objects  grow  more 
numerous,  involved,  and  subtle,  it  becomes  more  analytic, 
to  be  able  to  express  them;  and,  inversely,  those  who  are 
born  to  be  the  heirs  of  a  highly  analytic  language,  must 
needs  learn  to  tJiink  up  to  it,  to  observe  and  distinguish  all 
the  relations  of  objects,  for  which  they  find  the  expressions 
already  formed;  so  that  we  have  an  instructor  for  the 
thinking  powers  in  that  speech  which  we  are  apt  to  deem 
no  more  than  their  handmaid  and  minister."  No  two 
things,  indeed,  are  more  closely  connected  than  poverty  of 
language  and  poverty  of  thought.  Language  is,  on  one 
side,  as  truly  the  limit  and  restraint  of  thought,  as  on 
the  other  that  which  feeds  and  sustains  it.  Among  the 
"inarticulate  ones"  of  the  world,  there  may  be,  for  aught 
we  know%  not  a  few  in  whose  minds  are  ideas  as  grand, 
l)ictures  as  vivid  and  beautiful,  as  ever  haunted  the  brain 
of  a  poet;  but  lacking  the  words  which  only  can  express 
their  conceptions,  or  reveal  them  in  their  true  majesty  to 
themselves,  they  must  remain  "  mute,  inglorious  Miltons" 
forever.  A  man  of  genius  who  is  illiterate,  or  who  has  little 
command  of  language,  is  like  a  painter  with  no  pigments 
but  gray  and  dun.  How,  then,  shall  he  paint  the  purple 
and  crimson  of  the  sunset?     Though  he  may  have  made  the 


24  WOKDS;    THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

circuit  of  the  world,  and  gazed  on  the  main  wonders  of 
Nature  and  of  Art,  he  will  have  little  to  say  of  them  beyond 
commonplace,  In  bridging  the  chasm  between  such  a  man 
and  one  of  high  culture,  the  acquisition  of  words  plays 
as  important  a  part  as  the  acquisition  of  ideas. 

It  has  been  justly  said  that  no  man  can  learn  from  or 
communicate  to  another  more  than  the  words  they  are 
fixmiliar  with  either  express  or  can  be  made  to  express. 
The  deep  degradation  of  the  savage  is  due  as  much  to  the 
brutal  poverty  of  his  language  as  to  other  causes.  This 
poverty,  again,  is  due  to  that  deficiency  of  the  power  of 
abstraction  which  characterizes  savages  of  every  land.  A 
savage  may  have  a  dozen  verbs  for  "  I  am  here,"  "  I  am 
well,"  "  I  am  thirsty,"  etc.;  but  he  has  no  word  for  "  am  ": 
he  may  have  a  dozen  words  for  "  my  head,"  "your  head," 
etc.;  but  he  can  hardly  conceive  of  a  head  apart  from  its 
owner.  Nearly  all  the  tongues  of  the  American  savages 
are  polysynthetic;  that  is,  whole  clauses  and  even  whole 
sentences  are  compressed  together  so  violently,  that  often 
no  single  syllable  would  be  capable  of  separate  use.  The 
Abb6  Domenech  states  that  such  is  the  absolute  deficiency 
of  the  simplest  abstractions  in  some  of  these  languages 
that  an  Indian  cannot  say  "  I  smoke  "  without  using  such 
a  number  of  concrete  pictures  that  his  immensely  long 
word  to  represent  that  monosyllabic  action  means:  "I 
breathe  the  vapor  of  a  fire  of  herb  which  burns  in  a  stone 
bowl  wedged  into  a  pierced  stone."  To  express  the  idea 
of  "  day,"  the  Pawnees  use  such  a  word  as  shakoorooces- 
ha'n-f't,  and  their  word  for  "  tooth  "  is  the  fearful  polysyl- 
lable khofsiaJiatafkJiKsiii!  The  word  for  "  tongue"  in  Tlat- 
skanai  has  twenty-two  letters.  Though  these  vocables, 
which  bristle  with  more  consonants  than  the  four  sneezes 


THE   SIGNIFICANCE   OF   WORDS.  25 

of  a  Russian  name  of  note,  would  be  enough,  as  De  Quin- 
cey  says,  "  to  splinter  the  teeth  of  a  crocodile,"  yet  Mexi- 
can has  sounds  even  more  ear-splitting.  In  this  language 
the  common  address  to  a  priest  is  the  one  word  NotlazoDia- 
huizteopixcatatzin ;  that  is,  "  Venerable  priest,  whom  I 
honor  as  a  father."  A  fagot  is  tlatlatlulpistiteutH,  and 
"if  the  fagot  wei-e  of  green  wood,  it  could  hardly  make  a 
greater  splutter  in  the  fire."  A  lover  would  have  been 
obliged  to  say  "  I  love  you,"  in  this  language,  in  this  style, 
ni-mits-tsik(hvakd-tJasolt((;  and  instead  of  a  kiss  he  would 
have  had  to  ask  for  a  teteiiiui-iniquilitzli.  ^^  Bleu  merci!'" 
exclaims  the  French  writer  who  states  this  fact,  '■^  qua  ml  on 
a  pronoiice  le  mot  on  a  bien  nitrite  la  chose.'''' 

It  is  easy  to  see,  from  these  facts,  what  an  obstacle  the 
language  of  the  savage  presents  to  his  civilization.  Let  us 
suppose  a  savage  to  possess  extraordinary  natural  endow- 
ments, and  to  learn  any  one  of  the  leading  languages  of 
Europe;  is  it  not  easy  to  see  that  he  would  find  him.si.'lf 
prepared  for  labor  in  departments  of  mental  effort  whieh 
had  been  before  utterly  inaccessible  to  him,  and  that  he 
would  feel  that  his  powers  had  been  cheated  out  of  their 
action  by  this  possession  of  only  inferior  tools?  Hence 
the  knowledge  of  words  is  not  an  elegant  accomplishment 
only,  not  a  luxury,  but  a  positive  necessity  of  the  civilized 
and  cultivated  man.  It  is  necessary  not  only  to  him  who 
would  express  himself,  but  to  him  who  would  think,  with 
precision  and  effect.  There  is,  indeed,  no  higher  proof  of 
thorough  and  accurate  culture  than  the  fact  that  a  writer, 
instead  of  employing  words  loosely  and  at  hap-hazard, 
chooses  only  those  which  are  the  exact  vesture  of  his 
thought.  As  he  only  can  be  called  a  well  dressed  man 
whose   clothes   exactly  fit    him,  being   neither   small    and 


26  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

shrunken,  nor  loose  and  baggy,  so  it  is  the  first  charac- 
teristic of  a  good  style  that  the  words  fit  close  to  the  ideas. 
They  will  be  neither  too  big  here,  hanging  like  a  giant's 
robe  on  the  limbs  of  a  dwarf,  nor  too  small  there,  like  a 
boy's  garments  into  which  a  man  has  painfully  squeezed 
himself;  but  will  be  the  exact  correspondents  and  perfect 
exponents  of  his  thought.  Between  the  most  synonymous 
words  a  careful  writer  will  have  a  choice;  for,  strictly 
speaking,  there  are  no  synonyms  in  a  language,  the  most 
closely  resembling  and  apparently  equivalent  terms  having 
some  nice  shade  of  distinction, —  a  fine  illustration  of  which 
is  found  in  Ben  Jonson's  line,  "  Men  may  secureJij  sin,  but 
safely  never";  and,  again,  in  the  reply  with  which  Sydney 
Smith  used  to  meet  the  cant  about  popular  education  in 
England:  "Pooh!  pooh!  it  is  the  worst  educated  country  in 
the  world,  I  grant  you;  but  it  is  the  best  instructed.'" 
William  Pitt  was  a  remarkable  example  of  this  precision  of 
style.  Pox  said  of  him:  "Though  I  am  myself  never  at  a 
loss  for  a  word,  Pitt  not  only  has  a  word,  but  the  word, — 
the  very  word, —  to  express  his  meaning."  Robert  Hall 
chose  his  words  with  a  still  more  fastidious  nicety,  and  he 
gave  as  one  reason  for  his  writing  so  little,  that  he  could 
so  rarely  approach  the  realization  of  his  own  heau-ideal  of 
a  perfect  style.  It  is  related  of  him  that,  when  he  was  cor- 
recting the  proofs  of  his  sermon  on  "  Modern  Infidelity,"  on 
coming  to  the  famous  passage,  "  Eternal  God,  on  w'hat  are 
thine  enemies  intent?  What  are  those  enterprises  of  guilt 
and  horror,  that,  for  the  safety  of  their  performers,  require 
to  be  enveloped  in  a  darkness  which  the  eye  of  Heaven 
must  not  penetrate?" — he  exclaimed  to  his  friend,  Dr. 
Gregory:  ''''  Penetrate!  did  I  sa)''  penetrate,  sir,  when  I 
preached  it?"     "  Yes."    "  Do  you  think,  sir,  I  may  venture 


THE   SIGNIFICANCE   OF   WORDS.  27 

to  alter  it?  for  no  man  who  considers  the  force  of  the 
English  language  would  use  a  word  of  three  syllables  there 
but  from  absolute  necessity.  For  peHcfnite  put  pierce: 
pierce  is  the  word,  sir,  and  the  only  word,  to  be  used  there." 

John  Foster  was  a  yet  more  striking  example  of  this 
conscientiousness  and  severity  in  discriminating  words. 
Never,  perhaps,  was  there  a  writer  the  electric  action  of 
whose  mind,  telegraphing  with  all  nature's  works,  was  so 
in  contrast  with  its  action  in  writing.  Here  it  was  almost 
painfully  slow,  like  the  expression  of  some  costly  oil,  drop 
by  drop.  He  would  spend  whole  days  on  a  few  short  sen- 
tences, passing  each  word  under  his  concentrated  scrutiny, 
so  that  each,  challenged  and  examined,  took  its  place  in  the 
structure  like  an  inspected  soldier  in  the  ranks.  When 
Chalmers,  after  a  visit  to  London,  was  asked  what  Foster 
was  about,  he  replied:  "  Hard  at  it,  at  the  rate  of  a  line  a 
week."  Read  a  page  of  the  essay  on  "  Decision  of  Charac- 
ter," and  3'ou  will  feel  that  this  was  scarcely  an  exaggera- 
tion,—  that  he  stood  by  the  ringing  anvil  till  every  word 
was  forged  into  a  bolt.  Few  persons  know  how  hard  easy 
writing  is.  Who  that  reads  the  light,  spai'kling  verse  of 
Thomas  Moore,  dreams  of  the  mental  pangs,  the  long  and 
anxious  thought,  which  a  single  word  often  cost  him? 
Irving  tells  us  that  he  was  once  riding  with  the  Irish  poet 
in  the  streets  of  Paris,  when  the  hackney-coach  went  sud- 
denly into  a  deep  rut,  out  of  which  it  came  with  such  a  jolt 
as  to  send  their  pates  bump  against  the  roof.  "  By  Jove, 
/'/v  (/of  itf'  cried  Moore,  clapping  his  hands  with  great 
glee.  "Got  what?"  said  Irving.  "Why,"  said  the  poet, 
"that  irnnJ  I've  been  hunting  for  six  weeks,  to  complete 
my  la>t  song.     That  rascally  driver  has  jolted  it  out  of  me." 

The  ancient  writers  and  speakers  were  even   more   nice 


2S  AVORDS;    THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

:!ii'l  fastidious  than  the  moderns,  in  their  choice  and  ar- 
rangement of  words.  Virgil,  after  having  spent  eleven 
years  in  the  composition  of  the  iEneid,  intended  to  devote 
three  years  to  its  revision;  but,  being  prevented  by  his  last 
sickness  from  giving  it  the  finishing  touches  which  his  ex- 
quisite judgment  deemed  necessary,  he  directed  his  friends 
to  burn  it.  The  great  orator  of  Athens,  to  form  his  style, 
transcribed  Thucydides  again  and  again.  He  insisted  that 
it  was  not  enough  that  the  orator,  in  order  to  prepare  for 
delivery  in  public,  should  write  down  his  thoughts, —  he 
must,  as  it  were,  sculpture  them  in  brass.  He  must  not 
content  himself  with  that  loose  use  of  language  which 
characterizes  a  thoughtless  fluency,  but  his  words  must 
have  a  precise  and  exact  look,  like  newly  minted  coin,  with 
sharply  cut  edges  and  devices.  That  Demosthenes  himself 
"recked  his  own  rede"  in  this  matter  we  have  abundant 
proof  in  almost  every  page  of  his  great  speeches.  In  his 
masterpieces  we  are  introduced  to  mysteries  of  prose  com- 
position of  which  the  moderns  know  nothing.  We  find 
him,  as  a  German  critic  has  remarked,  bestowing  incredible 
pains,  not  only  upon  the  choice  of  woi'ds,  but  upon  the 
sequence  of  long  and  short  syllables,  not  in  order  to  pro- 
duce a  regularly  recurring  metre,  but  to  express  the  most 
various  emotions  of  the  mind  by  a  suitable  and  ever-chang- 
ing rhythm.  It  is  in  this  art  of  ordering  words  with 
reference  to  their  eff"ect,  even  more,  perhaps,  than  in  the 
action  for  which  his  name  is  a  S3'nonym,  that  he  exhibits 
his  consummate  dexterity  as  an  orator.  Change  their 
order,  and  you  at  once  break  the  charm.  The  rhythm,  in 
fact,  is  the  sense.  You  destroy  the  significance  of  the 
sentence  as  well  as  its  ring;  you  lessen  the  intensity  of  the 
meaning  as  well  as  the  verbal  force.     "  At  his  pleasure," 


THE   SIGNIFICANCE   OF   WORDS.  29 

says  Professor  Marsh,  "  he  separates  his  lightning  and  his 
thunder  by^an  interval  that  allows  his  hearer  half  to  forget 
the  coming  detonation,  or  he  instantaneously  follows  up 
the  dazzling  flash  with  a  pealing  explosion  that  stuns, 
prostrates  and  crushes  the  stoutest  opponent." 

Not  less  did  the  Roman  orators  consult  the  laws  of 
euphonic  sequence  or  metrical  convenience,  and  arrange 
their  words  in  such  a  succession  of  articulate  sounds  as 
would  fall  most  pleasingly  on  the  ear.  The  wonderful 
effects  which  sometimes  attended  their  elocution  were,  in 
all  probability,  chiefly  owing  to  their  exquisite  choice  of 
words  and  their  skill  in  musical  concords.  It  was  by  the 
char. a  of  numbers,  as  well  as  by  the  strength  of  reason, 
that  Cicero  confounded  Catiline  and  silenced  the  eloquent 
Hortensius.  It  was  this  that  deprived  Curio  of  all  power 
of  recollection  when  he  rose  to  oppose  that  great  master 
of  enchanting  rhetoric;  it  was  this  that  made  even  Cajsar 
himself  tremble,  and  at  last  change  his  determined  pur- 
pose, and  acquit  the  man  he  had  resolved  to  condemn. 
When  the  Roman  orator,  Carbo,  pronounced,  on  a  certain 
occasion,  the  sentence,  "'Patris  dictum  sapiens  teineritas  filii 
coDiprobacif,'''  it  was  astonishing,  says  Cicei'O,  to  observe 
the  general  applause  which  followed  that  harmonious  close. 
Doubtless  we  are  ignorant  of  the  art  of  pronouncing  that 
period  with  its  genuine  emphasis;  but  Cicero  assures  us 
that  had  the  final  measure, —  what  is  technical!}^  called  a 
(lichorec, —  been  changed,  and  the  words  placed  in  a  different 
order,  their  whole  effect  would  have  been  aljsolutely  de- 
stro3'ed.  With  the  same  exquisite  sensibility  to  nuiiibor.s, 
an  ancient  writer  says  that  a  similar  result  would  follow, 
if,  in  reading  tlie  Hi'st  line  of  the  vEneid, 

"  Arnia  virumquc  cauo,  Trojac  qui  primus  ab  oris," 


30  -WOUDS;    THEIR    USE    AND    AI5USE. 

instead  of  primus  we  were  to  pronounce  it  priniis  (is  bcin;^ 
long,  and  hs  short). 

It  is  this  cunning  choice,  along  with  the  skilful  ar- 
rangement of  words,  that,  even  more  than  the  thought, 
eternizes  the  name  of  an  author.  Style  is,  and  ever  has 
been,  the  most  vital  element  of  literary  immortalities. 
More  than  any  other  quality  it  is  a  writer's  own  property; 
and  no  one,  not  time  itself,  can  rob  him  of  it,  or  even 
diminish  its  value.  Facts  may  be  forgotten,  learning  grow 
commonplace,  startling  truths  dwindle  into  mere  truisms; 
but  a  grand  or  beautiful  style  can  never  lose  its  freshness 
or  its  charm.  For  his  gorgeous  style,  even  more  than  for 
his  colossal  erudition,  is  Gibbon  admired;  it  is  "  the  ordered 
march  of  his  lordly  prose  "  that  is  the  secret  of  Macaulay's 
charm;  and  it  is  the  unstudied  grace  of  Hume's  periods 
which  renders  him,  in  spite  of  his  imperfect  learning,  in 
spite  of  his  wilful  perversions  of  truth,  in  spite  of  his 
infidelity  and  his  toryism,  the  popular  historian  of  Eng- 
land. 

It  has  been  truly  said  by  a  brilliant  New  England 
writer  that  this  mystery  of  style, —  why  it  is,  that  when 
one  man  writes  a  fact,  it  is  cold  or  commonplace,  and  when 
another  man  writes  it,  in  a  little  diiferent,  but  equivalent 
phraseology,  it  is  a  rifle-shot  or  a  revelation, —  has  never 
been  sounded.  "  One  can  understand  a  little  how  the  wink 
or  twinkle  of  an  eye,  how  an  attitude,  how  a  gesture,  how 
a  cadence  or  impassioned  sweep  of  voice,  should  make  a 
boundless  distance  between  truths  stated  or  declaimed. 
But  how  words,  locked  up  in  forms,  still  and  stiff  in 
sentences,  contrive  to  tip  a  wink,  how  a  proposition  will 
insinuate  more  scepticism  than  it  states,  how  a  paragraph 
will  drip  with   the  honey  of  love,  how  a  phra^^e  will  trail 


THE   SIGXIFICANCE    OF    WORDS.  31 

an  infinite  suggestion,  how  a  page  can  he  so  serene  or  so 
gusty,  so  gorgeous  or  so  pallid,  so  sultry  or  so  cool,  as  to 
lap  you  in  one  intellectual  climate  or  its  opposite, — who 
has  fathomed  yet  this  wonder?" 

From  all  this  it  will  be  seen  how  absurd  it  is  to 
suppose  that  one  can  adequately  enjoy  the  masterpieces 
of  literature  by  means  of  translations.  Among  the  argu- 
ments against  the  study  of  the  dead  languages,  none  is 
more  pertinaciously  urged  by  the  educational  red  repub- 
licans of  the  day  than  this, —  that  the  study  is  useless, 
because  all  the  great  works,  the  masterpieces  of  antiquity, 
have  been  translated.  The  man,  we  ai*e  told,  who  cannot 
enjoy  Carlyle's  version  of  Wilhehn  Meister,  Mel  moth's 
Cicero,  Morris's  Virgil,  Martin's  Horace,  or  Carter's  Epic- 
tetus,  must  be  either  a  prodigious  scholar  or  a  pro- 
digious dunce.  Sometimes,  it  is  urged,  a  translator  even 
improves  upon  the  original,  as  did  Coleridge,  in  the  opin- 
ion of  man}^  upon  Schillei''s  "  Wallenstein."  All  this 
seems  plausible  enough,  but  the  Greek  and  Latin  scholar 
knows  it  to  be  fallacious  and  false.  He  knows  that  the 
finest  passages  in  an  author, —  the  exquisite  thoughts,  the 
curious  verbal  felicities, —  are  precisely  those  which  defy 
reproduction  in  another  tongue.  The  most  masterly  trans- 
lations of  them  are  no  more  like  the  original  than  a 
walking-stick  is  like  a  tree  in  full  l^loom.  The  quintessence 
of  a  writer, —  the  life  and  spirit, —  all  that  is  idiomatic, 
peculiar,  or  characteristic, —  all  that  is  Homerian  in 
Homer,  or  Horatian  in  Horace, —  evaporates  in  a  transla- 
tion. 

It  IS  true  that,  judging  by  dictionaries  only,  almost 
every  word  in  one  language  has  equivalents  in  every 
other;    but  a  critical  study  of  language  shows  that,  with 


32  words;  thkik   use  axd  Aiiusi:. 

the  exception  of  terms  denoting  sensible  objects  and  acts, 
tliere  is  rarely  a  precise  coincidence  in  meaning  between 
any  two  words  in  different  tongues.  Compare  any  two 
languages,  and  you  will  find  that  there  are,  as  the 
mathematicians  would  say,  many  incommensurable  quan- 
tities, many  words  in  each  untranslatable  into  the  other, 
and  that  it  is  often  impossible,  by  a  paraphrase,  to  supply 
an  equivalent.  To  use  De  Quincey's  happy  image  from  the 
language  of  eclipses,  the  correspondence  between  the  disk 
of  the  original  word  and  its  translated  representative,  is, 
in  thousands  of  instances,  not  annular;  the  centres  do  not 
coincide;  the  words  overlap.  Even  words  denoting  sen- 
sible objects  are  not  always  exact  equivalents  in  any  two 
languages.  It  might  be  supposed  that  a  berr/  (the 
German  for  mountain  or  hill)  was  a  berg  all  the  world 
over,  and  that  a  word  signifying  this  tangible  object  in 
one  language  must  be  the  absolute  equivalent  of  the  word 
expressing  it  in  another.  Yet,  as  a  late  German  writer  * 
has  said,  this  is  far  from  being  the  case.  The  English 
"  mountain,"  for  instance,  refers  to  something  bigger  than 
the  German  berg.  On  the  other  hand,  "hill,"  which  has 
the  next  lower  signification,  in  its  man}"  meanings  is  far 
too  diminutive  for  the  German  term,  which  finds  no  exact 
rendering  in  any  English  vocable. 

A  comparison  of  the  best  English  versions  of  the  New 
Testament  with  the  original,  strikingly  shows  the  inade- 
quacy of  the  happiest  translations.  Even  in  the  Revised 
Version,  upon  which  an  enormous  amount  of  labor  was 
expended  l)y  the  best  scholars  in  England  and  the  United 
States,  many  niceties  of  expression  which  mark  tlie  original 
fail    to   appear.     Owing    to   the    poverty    of    our    tongue 

*Karl  Ilildcbrand. 


THE    SIGNIFICAXCE    OF    WORDS.  33 

compared  with  the  Greek,  which,  it  has  been  said,  can 
draw  a  clear  line  where  other  languages  can  only  make 
a  blot,  the  translators  have  been  compelled  to  use  the  same 
English  word  for  different  Greek  ones,  and  thus  obliterate 
many  fine  distinctions  which  are  essential  to  the  meaning. 
Thus,  as  one  of  the  Revisers  has  shown,  it  is  impossible 
to  exhibit  in  English  the  delicate  shades  of  difference  in 
meaning  which  appear  in  the  Greek  between  the  two  verbs 
both  rendered  "love,"*  in  John  xxi,  15-17.  "The  word 
first  employed  by  Christ  is  a  very  common  one  in  the  New 
Testament,  and  specially  denotes  a  pure,  spiritual  affection. 
It  is  used  of  God's  love  to  man,  as  in  John  iii,  16 — 'God 
so  loved  the  world,'  etc. —  and  of  man's  love  to  God,  as  in 
Matt,  xxii,  37 — 'Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God,'  etc. 
The  other  word  more  particularly  implies  that  warmth  of 
feeling  which  exists  between  friends.  Thus,  it  is  used 
respecting  Lazarus  in  John  xi,  3:  'Behold,  he  whom  thou 
lovest  is  sick;'  and  again,  in  John  xx,  2,  of  St.  John  him- 
self, when  he  is  spoken  of  as  'the  disciple  whom  Jesus 
loved.'  Now,  the  use  of  the  one  word  at  first  by  Christ 
serves  to  remind  St.  Peter  of  the  claim  which  his  Divine 
Master  had  upon  his  deep,  reverential  love.  But  the 
Apostle,  now  profoundly  sensible  of  his  own  weakness, 
does  not  venture  to  promise  _  this,  yet,  feeling  his  whole 
heart  flowing  out  to  Christ,  he  makes  use  of  the  other 
word,  and  assures  the  Saviour  at  least  of  a  fervent  personal 
affection.  Christ  then  repeats  His  question,  still  using  the 
same  verb,  and  Peter  replies  as  before.  But  on  asking  the 
question  for  the  third  time,  Christ  graciously  adopts  the 
term  employed  by  the  Apostle:  He  speaks  to  him  again 
as  a  friend;    He  clasps  the  now  luippy  disciple  afresh  to 

♦  ayandui  and  (l>i\eu3. 


34  words;  their  use  axd  abuse. 

His  own  loving  heart."  *  Now  all  iluH  is  lost  through  the 
comparative  meagreness  of  our  language.  To  what  extent 
the  subtle  distinctions  of  the  Greek  original  are  and  must 
be  lost  in  the  translation,  may  be  guessed  from  the  fact 
that  there  are  no  fewer  than  ten  Greek  words  which  have 
been  rendered  "appoint"  in  the  ordinary  version,  no  fewer 
than  fourteen  which  stand  for  "give,"  and  no  fewer  than 
twenty-one  which  correspond  to  "  depart," 

Above  all  does  poetry  defy  translation.  It  is  too  subtle 
an  essence  to  be  poured  from  one  vessel  into  another 
without  loss.  Of  Cicero's  elegant  and  copious  rhetoric,  of 
the  sententious  wisdom  of  Tacitus,  of  the  keen  philosophic 
penetration  and  masterly  narrative  talent  of  Thucydides, 
of  the  thunderous  eloquence  of  Demosthenes,  and  even  of 
Martial's  jokes,  it  may  be  possible  to  give  some  inkling 
through  an  English  medium;  but  of  the  beauties  and 
splendors  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  poets, —  never.  As  soon 
will  another  Homer  appear  on  earth,  as  a  translator 
echo  the  marvellous  music  of  his  lyre.  Imitations  of  the 
"  Hiad,"  more  or  less  accurate,  may  be  given,  or  another 
poem  may  be  substituted  in  its  place;  but  a  perfect 
transfusion  into  English  is  impossible.  For,  as  Goethe 
somewhere  says,  Art  depends  on  Form,  and  you  cannot 
pi'eserve  the  form  in  alteriiuj  the  form.  Language  is  a 
strangely  suggestive  medium,  and  it  is  through  the  reflex 
and  vague  operation  of  words  upon  the  mind  that  the 
translator  finds  himself  bafliled.  Words,  as  Cowper  said  of 
books,  "are  not  seldom  talismans  and  spells."  They  have, 
especially  in  poetry,  a  potency  of  association,  a  kind  of 
necromantic  power,  aside  from  their  significance  as  repre- 

*  "Companion  to  the  Revised  Version  of  the  English  New  Testament,"  by 
Alexander  Roberts,  D.D. 


THE    SIGXIFICAXCE    OF    WORDS.  35 

sentative  signs.  Over  and  above  their  meanings  as  given 
in  the  dictionar}-,  they  connote  all  the  feeling  which  has 
gathered  round  them  by  their  employment  for  hundreds 
of  years.  There  are  in  every  language  certain  magical 
words,  which,  though  they  can  be  translated  into  other 
tongues,  yet  are  hallowed  by  older  memories,  or  awaken 
tenderer  and  more  delightful  associations,  than  the  corre- 
sponding words  in  those  tongues.  Such  words  in  English 
are  gentleman,  comfort,  and  home,  about  each  of  which 
cluster  a  multitude  of  associations  which  are  not  suggested 
by  any  foreign  words  by  which  they  can  be  rendered. 
There  is  in  poetry  a  mingling  of  sound  and  sense,  a 
delicacy  of  shades  of  meaning,  and  a  power  of  awakening 
associations,  to  which  the  instinct  of  the  poet  is  the  key, 
and  which  cannot  be  passed  into  a  foreign  language  if 
the  meaning  be  also  preserved.  You  may  as  easily  make 
lace  ruffles  out  of  hemp.  Language,  it  cannot  be  too  often 
repeated,  is  not  the  dress  of  thought;  it  is  its  living  expres- 
sion, and  controls  both  the  physiognomy  and  the  organi- 
zation of  the  idea  it  utters. 

IIow  many  aboitive  attempts  have  been  made  to  trans- 
late the  "Iliad"  and  the  "Odyssey"  into  English  verse! 
What  havoc  have  even  Pope  and  Cowper  made  of  some  of 
the  grandest  passages  in  the  old  bard!  The  former,  it  has 
been  well  said,  turned  his  lines  into  a  series  of  brilliant  epi- 
grams, sparkling  and  cold  as  the  "  Heroic  Epistles"  of  Ovid; 
the  other  chilled  the  warmth  and  toned  down  the  colors 
of  Ilomer  into  a  sober,  drab-tinted  hue,  through  which 
gods  and  men  loom  feebly,  and  the  camp  of  the  Aclucans, 
the  synod  of  the  Trojans,  and  the  deities  in  council,  have 
much  of  the  air  of  a  Quaker  meeting-house.  Regarded 
as  an  English  poem,  Pope's  translation  of  the  "Iliad"  is 


36  WORDS;    THEIR    USE   AND    ABUSE. 

unquestionably  a  brilliant  and  exquisitely  versified  pro- 
duction; but  viewed  as  a  transfusion  of  the  old  bard  into 
another  language,  it  is  but  a  caput  mortiiiim,  containing 
but  little  more  of  Homer  than  the  names  and  events.  The 
fervid  and  romantic  tone,  the  patriarchal  simplicity,  the 
mythologic  coloring,  the  unspeakable  audacity  and  fresh- 
ness of  the  images, —  all  that  breathes  of  an  earlier  world, 
and  of  the  sunny  shores,  and  laughing  waves,  and  blue 
sky,  of  the  old  JEgea.n, —  all  this,  as  a  critic  has  observed, 
"is  vanished  and  obliterated,  as  is  the  very  swell  and  fall 
of  the  versification,  regular  in  its  very  irregularity,  like 
the  roll  of  the  ocean.  Instead  of  the  burning,  picture-like 
words  of  the  old  Greek,  we  have  the  dainty  diction  of  a 
literary  artist;  instead  of  the  ever  varied,  resounding  swell 
of  the  hexameter,  the  neat,  elegant,  nicely  balanced  modern 
couplet.  In  short,  the  old  bard  is  stripped  of  his  flowing 
chlamys  and  his  fillets,  and  is  imprisoned  in  the  high-heoled 
shoes,  the  laced  velvet  coat,  and  flowing  periwig  of  the 
eighteenth  century."  Chapman,  who  has  more  of  the  spirit 
of  Homer,  occasionally  catches  a  note  or  two  from  the 
Ionian  trumpet;  but  presently  blows  so  discordant  a  blast 
that  it  would  have  grated  on  the  ear  of  Stentor  himself. 
Lord  Derby  and  William  C.  Bryant  have  been  more  suc- 
cessful in  many  respects  than  Pope  or  Cowper;  but  each 
has  gained  some  advantages  by  compensating  defects. 

Did  Dryden  succeed  better  when  he  put  the  "  ^neid  " 
into  verse  ?  Did  he  give  us  that  for  which  Virgil  toiled 
during  eleven  long  3'ears?  Did  he  give  us  the  embodi- 
ment of  those  vulgar  impressions  which,  when  the  old 
Latin  was  read,  made  the  Roman  soldier  shiver  in  all  his 
manly  limbs?  All  persons  who  are  familiar  with  English 
literature    know   what   havoc  Dryden    made  of  '"  Paradise 


THE   SIGNIFICANCE   OF   "WORDS.  37 

Lost/'  when  he  attempted,  even  in  the  same  language,  to 
put  it  into  rhyme, —  a  proposal  to  do  which  di'ew  from 
Milton  the  contemptuous  remark:  "Ay,  young  man;  you 
can  tag  my  rhymes."  A  man  of  genius  never  made  a 
more  signal  failure.  He  could  not  draw  the  bow  of 
Ulysses.  His  rhyming,  rhetorical  manner,  splendid  and 
powerful  as  it  confessedly  is,  proved  an  utterly  inadequate 
vehicle  for  the  high  argument  of  the  great  Puritan.  So 
with  his  modernizations  of  Chaucer.  His  reproductions 
of  "the  first  finder  of  our  faire  language"  contain  much 
admirable  verse;  but  it  is  not  Chaucer's.  They  are  sim- 
ply elaborate  paraphrases,  in  which  the  idiomatic  colors 
and  forms,  the  distinctive  beauties  of  the  old  poet, — 
above  all,  the  simplicity  and  sly  gi-ace  of  his  language, 
the  exquisite  tone  of  naivete,  which,  like  the  lispings  of 
infancy,  give  such  a  charm  to  his  verse, —  utterly  vanish. 
Dryden  failed,  not  from  lack  of  genius,  but  simply 
because  failure  was  inevitable, —  because  this  aroma  of 
antiquity,  in  the  process  of  transfusion  into  modern  lan- 
guage, is  sure  to  evaporate. 

All  such  changes  involve  a  loss  of  some  subtle  trait  of 
expression,  or  some  complexional  peculiarity,  essential  to 
the  truthful  exhibition  of  the  original.  The  outline,  the 
story,  the  bones  remain;  but  the  soul  is  gone, —  the  essence, 
the  ethereal  light,  the  perfume  is  vanished.  As  well  might 
a  painter  hope,  by  using  a  different  kind  of  tint,  to  give 
the  expression  of  one  of  Raphael's  or  Titian's  master- 
pieces, as  any  man  expect,  by  any  other  words  than  those 
which  a  great  poet  has  used,  to  convey  the  same  mean- 
ing. Even  the  humblest  writer  has  an  idiosyncrasy,  a 
manner  of  his  own,  without  which  the  identity  and  truth 
of  his  work  are  lost.     If,  then,  the  meaning  and  spirit  of 


38  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

a  poein  cannot,  be  transfencd  from  one  place  to  another, 
so  to  speak,  under  the  roof  of  a  common  language,  must 
it  not  a  fortiori  be  impossible  to  transport  them  faith- 
fully across  the  bari'iers  which  divide  one  language  from 
another,  and  antiquity  from  modern  times? 

How  many  ineflectual  attempts  have  been  made  to 
translate  Horace  into  English  and  French !  It  is  easy  to 
give  the  right  meaning,  or  something  like  the  meaning, 
of  his  lyrics;  but  they  are  cast  in  a  mould  of  such  ex- 
quisite delicacy  that  their  ease  and  elegance  defy  imita- 
tion. All  experience  shows  that  the  tradnttore  must 
necessarily  be  tradittore, —  the  translator,  a  traducer  of 
the  Sabine  bard.  As  well  might  you  put  a  violet  into  a 
crucible,  and  expect  to  reproduce  its  beauty  and  perfume, 
as  expect  to  reproduce  in  another  tongue  the  mysterious 
synthesis  of  sound  and  sense,  of  meaning  and  suggested 
association,  which  constitutes  the  vital  beauty  of  a  lyric. 
The  special  imagination  of  the  poet,  it  has  been  well 
said,  is  an  imagination  inseparably  bound  up  with  lan- 
guage; possessed  by  the  infinite  beauty  and  the  deepest, 
subtlest  meanings  of  words;  skilled  in  their  finest  sympa- 
thies; pow^erful  to  make  them  yield  a  meaning  which 
another  never  could  have  exti-acted  from  them.  It  is  of 
the  very  essence  of  the  poet's  art,  so  that,  in  the  highest 
exercise  of  that  art,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  the  ren- 
dering of  an  idea  in  appropi'iate  language;  but  the  con- 
ception, and  the  words  in  which  it  is  conveyed,  are  a 
simultaneous  creation,  and  the  idea  springs  forth  full- 
grown,  in  its  panoply  of  radiant  utterance. 

The  works  of  Horaer,  Virgil,  Dante,  Shakespeare,  and 
Goethe,  exist  in  the  words  as  the  mind  in  conjunction 
with  the  body.      Separation  is  death.      Alter  the   melody 


THE   SIGNIFICANCE    OF    WORDS.  39 

ever  so  skilfully,  and  you  change  the  effect.  You  cannot 
translate  a  sound;  you  cannot  give  an  elegant  version  of 
a  melody.  Prose,  indeed,  suffers  less  from  paraphrase  than 
poetry;  but  even  in  translating  a  prose  work,  unless  one 
containing  facts  or  reasoning  merely,  the  most  skilful 
linguist  can  be  sure  of  hardly  more  than  of  transferring 
the  raw  material  of  the  original  sentiment  into  his  own 
tongue.  The  bullion  may  be  there,  but  its  shape  is  al- 
tered; the  flower  is  preserved,  but  the  aroma  is  gone; 
there,  to  be  sure,  is  the  arras,  with  its  Gobelin  figures, 
but  it  is  the  wrong  side  out.  It  is  hardly  an  exaggeration 
to  say  that  there  is  as  much  contrast  between  the  best 
translation  and  the  original  of  a  great  author,  as  between 
a  wintry  landscape,  with  its  dead  grass  and  withered 
foliage,  and  the  same  landscape  arrayed  in  the  green 
robes  of  summer.  Na}',  we  prefer  the  humblest  original 
painting  to  a  feeble  copy  of  a  great  picture, —  a  barely 
"good"  original  book  to  any  lifeless  translation.  A  liv- 
ing dog  is  better  than  a  dead  lion;  for  the  external 
attributes  of  the  latter  are  nothing  without  the  spirit 
that  makes  them  terrible. 

The  difficulty  of  translating  from  a  dead  language,  of 
whose  onomatopoeia  we  are  ignorant,  will  appear  still 
more  clearly,  when  we  consider  v/hat  gross  and  ludicrous 
blunders  are  made  in  translating  even  from  one  living 
language  into  another.  Few  English-speaking  persons  can 
understand  the  audacity  of  Racine,  so  highly  applauded  by 
the  French,  in  introducing  the  words  cliien  and  sel  into 
poetry;  ''dog"  and  "salt"  may  be  used  by  us  without  dan- 
ger; but,  on  the  other  hand,  we  may  not  talk  of  "  entrails" 
in  the  way  the  French  do.  Every  one- has  heard  of  the 
Frenchman,  who    translated    the    majestic    exclamation   of 


40  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

Milton's  Satan,  "Hail!  horrors,  hail!"  by  ''''Comment  rotis 
portez-roiis,  Messieurs  les  Horreiirs,  comment  vous  portez- 
vous?''^  "How  do  you  do,  horrors,  how  do  you  do?" 
Another  Frenchman,  in  reproducing  the  following  passage 
from  Shakespeare  in  his  own  tongue, 

"Even  such  a  man,  so  faint,  so  spiritless, 
So  dull,  so  dead  in  look,  so  woe-hegone,^'' 

translated  the  italicized  words  thus:  "So,  grief,  be  off 
with  you!"  In  the  opera  of  " Macbetto,"  the  term  "hell- 
broth  "  in  the  witches'  scene  is  rendered  in  Italian  poUo 
inferno.  Hardly  less  ridiculous  is  the  blunder  made  by 
a  translator  of  Alexander  Smith's  "Life-Drama,"  who 
metamorphoses  the  expression,  "clothes  me  with  king- 
doms," mio '''' me  fait  un  vetement  de  royaumes,''' — "makes 
me  a  garment  of  kingdoms."  Even  so  careful  a  writer 
as  Lord  Mahon,  in  his  "  History  of  the  War  of  the 
Succession  in  Spain,"  translates  the  French  word  ahhe  by 
"abbot."  One  of  the  chief  difficulties  in  translating  into 
a  foreign  language  is  that,  though  every  word  the  trans- 
lator uses  may  be  authorized,  by  the  best  writei'S,  yet  the 
combination  of  his  terms  may  be  unidiomatic.  Thus  the 
words  arhie  and  rive  are  both  to  be  found  in  the  best 
French  writers;  yet  if  a  foreigner,  not  familiar  with  the 
niceties  of  that  language,  should  write 

"Sur  la  rive  du  fleuve  amassant  de  I'arene," 

he  would  be  laughed  at,  not  only  by  the  critics,  but  by 
the  most  illiterate  workmen  in  Paris.  The  French  idiom 
will  not  admit  of  the  expression  sur  la  rive  du  fleuve, 
correct  though  each  word  may  be  taken  singly,  but  re- 
quires the  phrase  sur  le  lord  de  la  rivitre,  as  it  does 
amasser  du  sahle,  and  not  amasser  de  Varhte.  What  can 
be  more  expressive  than  one  of  the  lines  in  which  Milton 


THE    SlfiXIFICANCE    OF    WOIIDS.  41 

describes  the  lost  angels  crowding  into  Pandemonium, 
where,  he  says,  the  air  was 

'^Brushed  with  the  kiss  of  rustling  wings," 

a  line  which  it  is  impossible  to  translate  into  words  that  will 
convey  precisely  the  same  emotions  and  suggestions  that 
are  roused  by  a  perusal  of  the  original?  Suppose  the 
translator  to  hit  so  near  to  the  original  as  to  write 

"Stirred  with  the  noise  of  quivering  wings," 

wili  not  the  line  affect  you  altogether  differently?  Let 
one  translate  into  another  language  the  following  line  of 
Shakespeare, 

"The  learned  pate  ducks  to  the  golden  fool," 

and  is  it  at  all  likely  that  the  quaint,  comic  effect  of  the 
words  we  have  italicized  would  be  reproduced? 

The  inadequacy  of  translations  will  be  more  strikingly 
exemplified  by  comparing  the  following  lines  of  Shake- 
speare with  such  a  version  as  we  might  expect  in  another 
language: 

"How  sweet  the  moonlight  sleeps  upon  this  bankl 
Here  will  we  sit,  and  let  the  sounds  of  music 
Creep  in  our  ears;  soft  stillness  and  the  night 
Become  the  touches  of  sweet  harmony." 

A  foreign  translator,  says  Leigh  Hunt,  would  dilute 
and  take  all  taste  and  freshness  out  of  this  draught  of 
poetry,  after  some  such  fashion  as  the  following: 

"  With  what  a  charm  the  moon  serene  and  bright 
Lends  on  the  bank  its  soft  reflected  light  1 
Sit  we,  I  praj',  and  let  us  sweetly  hear 
The  strains  melodious,  with  a  raptured  ear; 
For  soft  retreats,  and  night's  impressive  hour. 
To  harmony  impart  divinest  power." 

In  view  of  all  these  considerations  what  can  be  more 
untrue  than  the  statement  so  often  made,  that  to  be 
capable  of   easy  translation   is  a  test  of   the  excellence  of 


43  woKDs;  THEIR  use  and  abuse. 

a  composition?  This  doctrine,  it  has  been  well  observed, 
goes  upon  the  assumption  that  one  language  is  just  like 
another  language, —  that  every  language  has  all  the  ideas, 
turns  of  thought,  delicacies  of  expression,  figures,  associa- 
tions, abstractions,  points  of  view  which  every  other  lan- 
guage has.  "Now,  as  far  as  regards  Science,  it  is  true 
that  all  languages  are  pretty  much  alike  for  the  purposes 
of  Science;  but  even  in  this  respect  some  are  more  suit- 
able than  others,  which  have  to  coin  words  or  to  borrow 
them,  in  order  to  express  scientific  ideas.  But  if  languages 
are  not  all  equally  adapted  even  to  furnish  symbols  for 
those  universal  and  eternal  truths  in  which  Science  con- 
sists, how  can  they  be  reasonably  expected  to  be  all  equally 
rich,  equally  forcible,  equally  musical,  equally  exact, 
equally  happy,  in  expressing  the  idiosyncratic  peculiarities 
of  thought  of  some  original  and  fertile  mind,  who  has 
availed  himself  of  one  of  them?     *     *     * 

"It  seems  that  a  really  great  author  must  admit  of 
translation,  and  that  we  have  a  test  of  his  excellence  when 
he  reads  to  advantage  in  a  foreign  language  as  well  as 
in  his  own.  Then  Shakespeare  is  a  genius  because  he  can 
be  translated  into  German,  and  not  a  genius  because  he 
cannot  be  translated  into  French.  The  multiplication  table 
is  the  most  gifted  of  all  conceivable  compositions,  because 
it  loses  nothing  by  translation,  and  can  hardly  be  said  to 
belong  to  any  ona  language  whatever.  Whereas  I  should 
leather  have  conceived  that,  in  proportion  as  ideas  are 
novel  and  recondite,  they  would  be  difficult  to  put  into 
words,  and  that  the  very  fact  of  their  having  insinuated 
themselves  into  one  language  would  diminish  the  chance 
of  that  happ3'  accident  being  repeated  in  another.  In  the 
language  of  savages  you  can   hardly  express  any  idea  or 


THE    SIGNIFICANCE    OF    "WORDS.  43 

act  of  the  intellect  at  all.  Is  the  tongue  of  the  Hotten- 
tot or  Esquimau  to  be  made  the  measure  of  the  genius 
of  Plato,  Pindar,  Tacitus,  St.  Jerome,  Dante,  or  Cer- 
vantes?" * 

The  truUi  is,  music  written  for  one  instrument  cannot 
be  played  upon  another.  To  the  most  cunning  writer  that 
ever  tried  to  translate  the  beauties  of  an  author  into  a 
foreign  tongue,  we  may  say  in  the  language  of  a  French 
critic:  "  You  are  that  ignorant  musician  who  plays  his  part 
exactly,  not  skipping  a  single  note,  nor  neglecting  a  rest, — 
only  what  is  written  in  the  key  of /a,  he  plays  in  the  key  of 
sol.     Faithful  translator! " 

When  we  think  of  the  marvellous  moral  influence  which 
words  have  exercised  in  all  ages,  we  cannot  wonder  that 
the  ancients  believed  there  was  a  subtle  sorcery  in  them, 
"a  certain  bewitchery  or  fascination,"  indicating  that  lan- 
guage is  of  mystic  origin.  The  Jews,  believing  that  God 
had  revealed  a  full-grown  language  to  mankind,  attached 
a  divine  character  to  language,  and  supposed  that  there 
was  a  natural  and  necessary  connection  between  words 
and  things.  The  name  of  a  person  was  not  a  mere  con- 
ventional sign,  but  an  essential  attribute,  an  integral  part 
of  the  person  himself.  Hence  we  find  in  Genesis  no  less  tharn 
fifty  derivations  of  names,  in  almost  all  of  which  the  deri- 
vation connects  the  name,  prophniically  or  otherwise,  with 
some  event  in  the  person's  life.  Hence,  also,  the  practice, 
under  certain  conditions,  of  changing  men's  names,  as  illus- 
trated in  the  histories  of  Abraham,  Sarah,  Jacob,  Joshua 
and  others.  "Call  me  not  Naomi  (pleasant),  but  Mara 
(bitter),"  said  the  broken-hearted  widow  of  Elimelech. 
"Even  in  the  New  Tesfairient  we  find  our  Lord  Himself  in 

*" University  Sirmoiis,"  by  J.  H.  Newman. 


44  words;  their  use  and  abuse, 

a  solemn  moment  fixing  on  the  mind  of  His  greatest  apostle 
a  new  and  solemn  significance  given  to  the  name  he  bore. 
'  Thou  art  Peter,  and  on  this  rock  will  I  build  my  church.' 
St.  Paul  also,  is  probably  playing  upon  a  name  when,  in 
Phil,  iv,  3,  he  affectionately  addresses  a  friend  as  y.^rj^ce 
IbX,uys,  '  true  yoke  fellow,'  since  it  is  an  ancient  and  very 
probable  supposition  that  Syzygus  or  Yokefellow  is  there 
a  proper  name."  The  Gothic  nations  supposed  that  even 
their  mysterious  alphabetical  charactei's,  called  "  Runes," 
possessed  magical  powers;  that  they  could  stop  a  sailing 
vessel  or  a  flying  arrow, —  that  they  could  excite  love  or 
hate,  or  even  raise  the  dead.  The  Gi'eeks  believed  that 
there  was  a  necessary,  mysterious  connection  between 
words  and  the  objects  they  signified,  so  that  man  uncon- 
fi^ciously  expressed,  in  the  words  whereby  he  named  things 
or  persons,  their  innermost  being  and  future  destiny,  as 
though  in  a  symbol  incomprehensible  to  himself.  The 
accidental  good  omen  in  the  name  of  an  envoy  who  was 
called  Hegesistratos,  or  "leader  of  an  arm}-,"  decided  a 
Greek  general  to  assist  the  Samians,  and  led  to  the  bat- 
tle of  Mycale.  The  Romans,  in  their  levies,  took  care  to 
enrol  first  names  of  good  omen,  such  as  Victor,  Valerius, 
Salvius,  Felix,  and  Faustus.  Caesar  gave  a  command  in 
Spain  to  an  obscure  Scipio,  merely  for  the  omen  which  his 
name  involved.  When  an  expedition  had  been  planned 
under  the  leadership  of  Atrius  Niger,  the  soldiers  abso- 
lutely refused  to  proceed  under  a  commander  of  so  ill 
omened  a  name, —  dux  aboiiiinauc/i  nominis, —  it  being,  as 
De  Quince)'  says,  "  a  pleonasm  of  darkness."  The  same 
deep  conviction  that  words  are  powers  is  seen  in  the 
favete  Unriuts  and  bona  verba  qiiceso  of  the  Romans,  by 
which   they  endeavored   to  repress   the    utterance  of  any 


THE    SIGXIFICAXCE    OF    WORDS.  45 

word  suggestive  of  ill  fortune,  lest  the  event  so  suggested 
to  the  imagination  should  actually  occur.  So  they  were 
careful  to  avoid,  by  euphemisms,  the  utterance  of  any 
word  directly  expressive  of  death  or  other  calamity,  saying 
vixit  instead  of  mortuus  est,  and  "  be  the  event  fortunate  or 
otherwise,"  instead  of  "  adverse."  The  name  Egesta  they 
changed  into  Segesta,  Maleventum  into  Beneventum,  Axei- 
nos  into  Euxine,  and  Epidamnus  into  Dyrrhachiura,  to 
escape  the  perils  of  a  word  suggestive  of  damnum,  or 
detriment.  Even  in  later  times  the  same  feeling  has  pre- 
vailed,—  an  illustration  of  which  we  have  in  the  life  of 
Pope  Adrian  VI,  who,  when  elected,  dared  not  retain  his 
own  name,  as  he  wished,  because  he  was  told  by  his  cardi- 
nals that  every  Pope  who  had  done  so  had  died  in  the  first 
year  of  his  reign.* 

That  there  is  a  secret  instinct  which  leads  even  the 
most  illiterate  peoples  to  recognize  the  potency  of  words, 
is  illustrated  by  the  use  made  of  names  in  the  East,  in 
"  the  black  art."  In  the  Island  of  Java,  a  fearful  influ- 
ence, it  is  said,  attaches  to  names,  and  it  is  believed  that 
demons,  invoked  in  the  name  of  a  living  individual,  can  be 
made  to  appear.  One  of  the  magic  arts  practised  there  is 
to  write  a  man's  name  on  a  skull,  a  bone,  a  shroud,  a  bier, 
an  image  made  of  paste,  and  then  put  it  in  a  place  where 
two  roads  meet,  when  a  fearful  enchantment,  it  is  believed, 
will  be  wrought  against  the  person  whose  name  is  so 
inscribed. 

Ikit  we  need  not  go  to  antiquity  or  to  barbarous  nations 
to  learn  the  mystic  power  of  words.     There  is  riot  a  day, 

*  We  have  heard  of  an  Englishnian'8  deploring  with  the  deepest  pathos  his 
having  been  named  "James,''  asserling  tliyt  it  bad  to  some  extent  made  a 
fiunko\  uf  his  very  soul,  afjaiii.-t  his  will. 


46  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

liarilly  an  hour  of  our  lives,  which  does  not  furnisli  exam- 
ples of  their  ominous  force.  Mr.  Maurice  says  with  truth, 
that  "  a  light  flashes  out  of  a  word  sometimes  which  fri;^ht- 
ens  one.  It  is  a  common  word;  one  wonders  how  one  has 
dared  to  use  it  so  frequently  and  so  carelessly,  when  there 
were  such  meanings  hidden  in  it."  Shakespeare  makes  one 
of  his  characters  say  of  another,  "  She  speaks  poniards,  and 
every  word  stabs";  and  there  are,  indeed,  words  which  are 
shai'per  than  drawn  swords,  which  give  more  pain  than  a 
score  of  blows;  and,  again,  there  are  words  by  which  pain 
of  soul  is  relieved,  hidden  grief  removed,  sympathy  con- 
veyed, counsel  imparted,  and  courage  infused.  How  often 
has  a  word  of  recognition  to  the  struggling  confirmed  a 
sublime  yet  undecided  purpose,  —  a  word  of  sympathy 
opened  a  new  vista  to  the  desolate,  that  let  in  a  prospect 
of  heaven, —  a  word  of  truth  fired  a  man  of  action  to  do  a 
deed  which  has  saved  a  nation  or  a  cause, —  or  a  genius 
to  write  words  which  have  gone  ringing  down  the  ages! 

"  I  have  known  a  word  more  gentle 

Than  the  breath  of  summer  air; 
In  a  listening  heart  it  nestled, 

A*nd  it  lived  forever  there. 
Not  the  beating  of  its  prison 

Stirred  it  ever,  night  or  day ; 
Only  with  the  heart's  last  throbbing 

Could  it  ever  fade  away."" 

A  late  writer  has  truly  said  that  "  there  may  be  phrases 
which  shall  be  palaces  to  dwell  in,  treasure-houses  to 
explore;  a  single  word  may  be  a  window  from  w-hich  one 
may  perceive  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth  and  the  glory 
of  them.  Oftentimes  a  woi'd  shall  speak  what  accumulated 
volumes  have  labored  in  vain  to  utter;  there  may  be  3'ears 
of  crowded  passion  in  a  word,  and  half  a  life  in  a  sen- 
tence." 


THE    SIGXIFICANCE    OF    WOIIDS.  47 

"  Nothing,"  says  Hawthorne,  "  is  more  unaccountable 
than  the  spell  that  often  lurks  in  a  spoken  word.  A 
thought  may  be  present  to  the  mind  so  distinctly  that  no 
utterance  could  make  it  more  so;  and  two  minds  may  be 
conscious  of  the  same  thought,  in  which  one  or  both  take 
the  profoundest  interest;  but  as  long  as  it  remains  un- 
spoken, their  familiar  talk  flows  quietly  over  tlio  hidden 
idea,  as  a  rivulet  may  sparkle  and  dimple  over  something 
sunken  in  its  bed.  But  speak  the  word,  and  it  is  like 
bringing  up  a  drowned  body  out  of  the  deepest  pool  of  the 
rivulet,  which  has  been  aware  of  the  horrible  secret  all 
along,  in  spite  of  its  smiling  surface." 

The  significance  of  words  is  illustrated  b}''  nothing, 
perhaps,  more  strikingly  than  by  the  fact  that  unity  of 
speech  is  essential  to  the  u.nity  of  a  people.  Community  of 
language  is  a  stronger  bond  than  identity  of  religion, 
government,  or  interests  ;  and  nations  of  one  speech, 
though  separated  by  broad  oceans,  and  by  creeds  yet  more 
widely  divorced,  are  one  in  culture,  one  in  feeling.  Prof. 
Marsh  has  well  observed  that  the  fine  patriotic  effusion  of 
Arndt,  "H'a«  ist  des  DeutscJicn  VutevJand  ?''''  was  founded 
upon  the  idea  that  the  oneness  of  the  Deutsche  Zioif/e, 
the  German  speech,  implied  a  oneness  of  spirit,  of  aims, 
and  of  duties;  and  the  universal  acceptance  with  which 
the  song  was  received  showed  that  the  poet  had  struck  a 
chord  to  which  evei-y  Teutonic  heart  responded.  When 
a  nation  is  conquered  by  another,  which  would  hold  it  in 
subjection,  it  has  to  be  again  conquered,  especially  if  its 
character  is  essentially  opposed  to  that  of  its  conqueror, 
and  the  second  conquest  is  often  the  more  difficult  of  the 
t\vo.  To  kill  it  effectually,  its  nalionality  must  be  killed, 
and  thi.^  can   be  done  only  by  killing   its  language;  for  it 


48  WOKDS;    THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

1^5  through  its  language  that  its  national  prejudices,  its 
loves  and  hates,  and  passions  live.  When  this  is  not  done, 
the  old  language,  slowly  dying  out, —  if,  indeed,  it  dies  at 
all, —  has  time  to  convey  the  national  traditions  into  the 
new  language,  thus  perpetuating  the  enmities  that  keep 
the  two  nations  asunder.  We  see  this  illustrated  in  the 
Irish  language,  which,  with  all  the  ideas  and  feelings  of 
which  that  language  is  the  representative  and  the  vehicle, 
has  been  permitted  by  the  English  government  to  die  a 
lingering  death  of  seven  or  eight  centuries.  The  coexist- 
ence of  two  languages  in  a  state  is  one  of  the  greatest 
misfortunes  that  can  befall  it.  The  settlement  of  town- 
ships and  counties  in  our  country  by  distinct  bodies  of 
foreigners  is,  therefore,  a  great  evil;  and  a  daily  news- 
jjaper,  with  an  Irish,  German,  or  French  prefix,  or  in  a 
foreign  language,  is  a  perpetual  breeder  of  national  ani- 
mosities, and  an  effectual  bar  to  the  Americanization  of 
our  foreign  population. 

The  languages  of  conquered  peoples,  like  the  serfs  of 
the  middle  ages,  appear  to  be  glehce  adscriptitice,  and  to 
extirpate  them,  except  by  extirpating  the  native  race  itself, 
is  an  almost  impossible  task.  Rome,  though  she  conquered 
Greece,  could  not  plant  her  language  there.  The  barba- 
rians who  overran  the  Roman  Empire  adopted  the  lan- 
guages of  their  new  subjects;  the  Avars  and  Slaves  who 
settled  in  Greece  became  Hellenized  in  language;  the 
Northmen  in  France  adopted  a  Romanic  tongue;  and  the 
Germans  in  France  and  northern  Italy,  as  well  as  the 
Goths  in  Spain,  conformed  to  the  speech  of  the  tribes 
they  had  vanquished.  It  is  asserted,  on  not  very  good 
authority,  that  William  the  Conqueror  fatigued  his  ear 
and  exhausted   his  patience,  during  the  first  years  of  his 


THE    SIGNIFICANCE    OF    WORDS.  49 

sovereignty,  in  trying  to  learn  the  Saxon  language;  but, 
failing,  ordered  the  Saxons  to  speak  Nornian-Frencli.  He 
might  as  well  have  ordered  his  new  subjects  to  walk  on 
their  heads.  Charles  the  Fifth,  in  all  the  plenitude  of  his 
power,  could  not  have  compelled  all  his  subjects,  Dutch, 
Flemish,  German,  Italian,  Spanish,  etc.,  to  learn  his  lan- 
guage; he  had  to  learn  theirs,  though  a  score  in  number, 
as  had  Charlemagne  before  him. 

England  has  maintained  her  dominion  in  the  East  for 
more  than  a  hundred  and  fifty  years,  yet  the  mass  of 
Hindoos  know  no  more  of  her  language  than  of  the  Greek. 
In  the  last  century,  Joseph  II,  of  Austria,  issued  an  edict 
that  all  his  subjects,  German,  Slavonic,  or  Magyar,  should 
speak  and  write  one  language, —  German;  but  the  people 
recked  his  decree  as  little  as  did  the  sea  that  of  Canute. 
Many  of  the  provinces  broke  out  into  open  rebellion;  and 
the  project  was  finally  abandoned.  The  Venetians  were 
for  a  long  period  under  the  Austrian  yoke;  but  they 
spoke  as  pure  Italian  as  did  any  of  their  independent 
countrymen,  and  they  never  detested  their  rulers  more 
heartily  than  at  the  time  of  their  deliverance.  The 
strongest  bond  of  union  between  the  different  States  of 
this  country  is  not  the  wisdom  of  our  constitution,  nor  the 
geographical  unity  of  our  territory,  but  the  one  common 
language  that  is  spoken  throughout  the  Republic,  from  the 
great  lakes  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  from  the  Atlantic 
to  the  Pacific  Ocean.  Were  different  tongues  spoken  in  the 
different  sections  of  the  realm,  no  wisdom  of  political 
structure  or  sagacity  of  political  administration  could  hold 
so  many  States  together  amidst  such  diversities  of  culture 
and  social  customs,  and  interests  so  conflicting.  Rut  our 
unity    of   speech, —  the    common    language    in    which    we 


50  words;   their  use  and  abuse. 

express  our  thoughts  and  feelings,  making  all  friendly  and 
commercial  correspondence  easy,  giving  us  a  common  lit- 
erature, and  enabling  us  to  read  the  same  books,  news- 
[)apers,  printed  lectures  and  speeches, —  this  is  like  a  soul 
animating  all  the  limbs  of  the  Republic,  giving  it  a  firmer 
unity  than  its  geological  skeleton  or  its  political  muscles 
could  possiblj'  ensure.  Were  the  languages  of  our  country 
as  various  as  those  of  Europe,  who  does  not  see  that  the 
task  of  allaying  the  bitter  feeling  of  hostility  at  the  South, 
which  led  to  the  late  outbreak,  and  of  fusing  the  citizens 
of  the  North  and  of  the  South  into  one  homogeneous  peo- 
ple, would  be  almost  liopelessV 

As  a  corollary  from  all  that  has  been  said,  it  is  plain 
that  nothing  tends  more  to  make  a  man  just  toward  other 
nations  than  the  exploration  through  their  languages  of 
their  peculiar  thought-world.  He  who  masters  the  speech 
of  a  foreign  people  will  gain  therefrom  a  profound  knowl- 
edge of  their  modes  of  thought  and  feeling,  more  accurate 
in  some  respects  than  he  could  gain  by  personal  inter- 
course with  them.  He  will  feel  the  pulse  of  their  national 
life  in  their  dictionary,  and  will  detect  in  their  phraseology 
many  a  noble  and  manly  impulse,  of  which,  while  blinded 
by  national  prejudice,  he  had  never  dreamed. 

A  volume  might  be  filled  with  illustrations  of  the  power 
of  words;  but,  great  as  is  their  power,  and  though,  when 
nicely  chosen,  they  have  an  intrinsic  force,  it  is,  after  all, 
the  Diroi  who  makes  them  potent.  As  it  was  not  the 
famous  needle  gun,  destructive  as  it  is,  which  won  the  late 
Prussian  victories,  but  the  intelligence  and  discipline  of 
the  Prussian  soldier, —  the  man  hr]tiiitl  the  gun,  educated  in 
tlie  best  common  schools  in  the  world, —  so  it  is  the  latent 
heat  of  character,  the  man  behind  the  words,  that  gives 


THE    SIGXIFICAXCE    OF    WORDS.  51 

them  moraentviiu  and  projectile  force.  The  same  words, 
coming  from  one  person,  are  as  the  idle  wind  that  kisses 
the  cheeks;  coming  from  another,  they  are  the  cannon  shot 
that  pierces  the  target  in  the  bull's-eye.  The  thing  said  is 
the  same  in  each  case;  the  enormous  difference  lies  in  the 
man  who  says  it.  The  man  fills  out,  crowds  his  woi'ds  with 
meaning,  and  sends  them  out  to  do  a  giant's  work;  or  he 
makes  them  void  and  nugatory,  impotent  to  reach  their 
destination,  or  to  do  any  execution  should  they  hit  the 
mark.  The  weight  and  value  of  opinions  and  sentiments 
depend  oftentimes  less  upon  their  intrinsic  worth  than 
upon  the  degree  in  which  they  have  been  organized  into 
the  nature  of  the  person  who  utters  them;  their  force,  less 
upon  their  inherent  power  than  upon  the  latent  heat  stored 
away  in  their  formation,  which  is  liberated  in  their  pub- 
lication. 

There  is  in  character  a  force  which  is  felt  as  deeply, 
and  which  is  as  irresistible,  as  the  mightiest  physical  force, 
and  which  makes  the  plainest  expressions  of  some  men  like 
consuming  fire.  Their  woi'ds,  instead  of  being  the  barren 
signs  of  abstract  ideas,  are  the  media  through  which  the 
life  of  one  mind  is  radiated  into  other  minds.  They 
inspire,  as  well  as  inform;  electrify,  as  well  as  enlighten. 
Even  truisms  from  their  lips  have  the  effect  of  original 
perceptions;  and  old  saws  and  proverbs,  worn  to  shreds  by 
constant  repetition,  startle  the  ear  like  brilliant  fancies. 
Some  of  the  greatest  effects  recorded  in  the  history  of  elo- 
(juence  have  been  produced  by  words  which,  when  read, 
strike  us  as  tame  and  commonplace.  The  tradition  that 
Whitefield  could  thrill  an  audience  by  saying  "  Mesopo- 
tamia!" probaljly  only  burlesques  an  actual  fact. 

Grattan  said  of  the  eloquence  of  Charles  James  Fox  that 


62  WORDS;    THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

"every  sentence  came  rollinif  like  a  wave  of  the  Atlantic, 
three  thousand  miles  long."  Willis  says  that  every  word 
of  Webster  weighs  a  pound.  College  sophomores,  newly 
fledged  lawyers,  and  representatives  from  Bunkum ville, 
often  display  more  fluency  than  the  New  Hampshire  giant; 
but  his  words  are  to  theirs  as  the  roll  of  thunder  to  the 
patter  of  rain.  What  makes  his  argument  so  ponderous  and 
destructive  to  his  opponents,  is  not  its  own  weight  alone, 
but  in  a  great  degree  the  added  weight  of  his  temper  and 
constitution,  the  trip-hammer  moniention  with  which  he 
makes  it  fall  upon  the  theory  he  means  to  crush.  Even 
the  vast  mass  of  the  man  helped,  too,  to  make  his  words 
impressive.  "He  carried  men's  minds,  and  overwhelm- 
ingly pressed  his  thought  upon  them,  with  the  immense 
current  of  his  physical  energy."  When  the  great  cham- 
pion of  New  England  said,  in  the  United  States  Senate, 
"There  are  Lexington  and  Concord  and  Bunker  Hill,  and 
there  they  will  remain  forever,"  it  was  the  weight  of  char- 
acter, and  of  all  the  associations  connected  with  it,  which 
changed  that  which,  uttered  by  another,  would  have  been 
the  merest  truism,  into  a  lofty  and  memorable  sentiment. 
The  majesty  of  the  utterance,  which  is  said  to  have  quick- 
ened the  pulse  even  of  "  the  great  NuUifier,"  Calhoun,  is 
due  to  the  fact  that  it  came  from  a  mighty  nature,  which 
had  weighed  and  felt  all  the  meaning  which  those  three 
spots  represent  in  the  stormy  history  of  the  world.  It 
was  this  which  gave  such  prodigious  power  to  the  words 
of  Chatham,  and  made  them  smite  his  adversaries  like  an 
electric  battery.  It  was  the  haughty  assumption  of  supe- 
riority, the  scowl  of  his  imperial  brow,  the  ominous  growl 
of  his  voice,  "like  thunder  heard  remote,"  the  impending 
lightnings  which  seemed  ready  to  dart  from  his  eyes,  and, 


THE   SIGNIFICANCE   OF    WORDS.  53 

above  all,  the  evidence  which  these  furnished  of  an  impe- 
rious and  overwhelming  will,  that  abashed  the  proudest 
peers  in  the  House  of  Lords,  and  made  his  words  perform 
the  office  of  stabs  and  blows.  The  same  words,  issuing 
from  other  lips,  would  have  been  as  harmless  as  pop- 
guns. 

In  reading  the  quotations  from  Chalmers,  which  are 
reported  to  have  so  overwhelmingly  oppressed  those  who 
heard  them,  almost  every  one  is  disappointed.  It  is  the 
creative  individuality  projected  into  the  words  that  makes 
the  entire  difference  between  Kean  or  Kembld  and  the 
poorest  stroller  that  murders  Shakespeare.  It  is  said  that 
Macready  never  produced  a  more  thrilling  effect  than  by 
the  simple  words,  "  Who  said  that?''  An  acute  American 
•writer  observes  that  when  Sir  Edward  Coke,  a  man  essen- 
tially commonplace  in  his  intellect  and  prejudices,  though 
of  vast  acquirement  and  giant  force  of  character,  calls 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh  "  a  spider  of  hell,"  the  metaphor  may 
not  seem  remarkable;  but  it  has  a  terrible  significance 
when  we  see  the  whole  roused  might  of  Sir  Edward  Coke 
glaring  through  it.*  What  can  be  more  effective  than 
the  speech  of  Thersites  in  the  first  book  of  the  "Iliad"? 
Yet  the  only  effect  was  to  bring  down  upon  the  speaker's 
shoulders  the  staff  of  Ulysses.  Pope  well  observes  that, 
had  Ulysses  made  the  same  speech,  the  troops  would  have 
sailed  for  Greece  that  very  night.  The  world  considers 
not  merely  what  is  said,  but  tvho  speaks,  and  whence  he 
says  it. 

"  Let  but  a  lord  niico  own  thf  happy  lines, 
How  the  wit  brightens-,  how  the  style  refines!" 

says  the  same  poet   of  a  servile   race;    and   another   poet 

♦"Literature  and  Life,"'  by  Edwin  P.  Whipple. 


54  WOIiDS;    TlIEIIl    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

says  of  a  preacher  who  illustrated  his  doctrine  by  his  life, 
that 

"'riiith  from  his  lips  pi-fvailcd  with  double  sway." 

Euripides  expresses  the  same  belief  in  the  efficacy  of 
position  and  character,  when  he  makes  Hecuba  entreat 
Ulysses  to  intercede  for  her;  "for  the  arguments,"  says 
she,  "  which  are  uttered  by  men  of  repute,  are  very  differ- 
ent in  strength  from  those  uttered  by  men  unknown." 

The  significance  of  the  simplest  epithet  depends  upon 
the  character  of  the  man  that  uses  it.  Let  two  men  of 
different  education,  tastes,  and  habits  of  thought,  utter 
the  word  "  grand,"  and  our  sense  of  the  word  is  modified 
according  to  our  knowledge  of  the  men.  The  conceptions 
represented  by  the  words  a  man  uses,  it  is  evident,  are 
different  from  every  other  man's;  and  into  this  difference 
enter  all  his  individuality  of  character,  the  depth  or  the 
shallowness  of  his  knowledge,  the  quality  of  his  education, 
the  strength  or  feebleness  of  his  feelings,  everything  that 
distinguishes  him  from  another  man. 

Mr.  Whipple  says  truly  that  "  there  are  no  more  simple 
words  than  'green,'  'sweetness,'  and  'rest,'  yet  what  depth 
and  intensity  of  significance  shine  in  Chaucer's  'gi-een'; 
what  a  still  ecstasy  of  religious  bliss  irradiates  'sweetness,' 
as  it  drops  from  the  pen  of  Jonathan  Edwards;  what 
celestial  repose  beams  from  'rest'  as  it  lies  on  the  page  of 
Barrow!  The  moods  seem  to  transcend  the  resources  of 
language;  yet  they  are  expressed  in  common  words,  trans- 
figured, sanctified,  imparadised  by  the  spiritual  vitality 
which  streams  through  them."  The  same  critic,  in  speaking 
of  style  as  the  measure  of  a  writer's  power,  observes  that 
"  the  marvel  of  Shakespeare's  diction  is  its  immense  sug- 
gestiveness, —  his  power  of  radiating  through   new  verbal 


THE    SIGNIFICANCE   OF    WORDS.  55 

coinbiuation.s,  or  through  single  expressions,  a  life  and 
meaning  which  they  do  not  retain  in  their  removal  to 
dictionaries.  When  the  thought  is  so  subtle,  or  the  emo- 
tion so  evanescent,  or  the  imagination  so  remote,  that  it 
cannot  be  flashed  upon  the  '  inward  eye,'  it  is  hinted  to 
the  inward  ear  by  some  exquisite  variation  of  tone.  An 
American  essayist  on  Shakespeare,  Mr.  Emerson,  in  speak- 
ing of  the  impossibility  of  acting  or  reciting  his  plays, 
refers  to  this  magical  suggestiveness  in  a  sentence  almost 
as  remarkable  as  the  thing  it  describes.  '  The  recitation,' 
ho  says,  '  begins;  one  golden  word  leaps  out  immortal  from 
all  this  painted  pedantry,  and  sweetly  tonnents  us  with 
invitations  to  its  oivn  inaccessible  homes!''  He  who  has  not 
felt  this  witchery  in  Shakespeare's  style  has  never  read 
him.  He  may  have  looked  at  the  words,  but  has  never 
looked  into  them." 

The  fact  that  words  are  never  taken  absolutely, —  that 
they  are  expressions,  not  simply  of  thoughts  or  feelings, 
but  of  natures, —  that  they  are  media  for  the  emission  and 
transpiration  of  character, —  is  one  that  cannot  be  too 
dee[)ly  pondered  by  young  speakers  and  writer's.  Fluent 
young  men  who  wonder  that  the  words  which  they  utter 
with  such  glibness  and  emphasis  have  so  little  weight  with 
their  hearers,  should  ask  themselves  whether  their  char- 
acters are  such  as  to  give  weight  to  their  words.  As  in 
engineering  it  is  a  rule  that  a  cannon  should  be  at  least 
one  hundred  times  heavier  than  its  shot,  so  a  man's 
character  should  be  a  hundred  times  heavier  than  what 
he  says.  When  a  La  Place  or  a  Humboldt  talks  of  the 
"universe,"  the  word  has  quite  another  meaning  than 
when  it  is  used  by  plain  John  Smith,  whose  ideas  have 
never  extended   beyond    the  town   of   Hull.     So,   when   a 


5G  words;  thkir  use  and  abuse. 

man's  friend  gives  him  religious  advice,  and  talks  of  "  tlie 
solemn  responsibilities  of  life,"  it  makes  a  vast  difference 
in  the  weight  of  the  words  whether  they  come  from  one 
who  has  been  tried  and  proved  in  the  world's  fiery  furnace, 
and  whose  whole  life  has  been  a  trip-hammer  to  drive 
home  what  he  says,  or  from  a  callow  youth  who  prates 
of  that  which  he  feels  not,  and  testifies  to  things  which 
are  not  realities  to  his  own  consciousness.  There  is  a 
hollow  ring  in  the  words  of  the  cleverest  man  who  talks 
of  "  trials  and  tribulations "  which  he  has  never  felt. 
"Words,"  says  the  learned  Selden,  "must  be  fitted  to  a 
man's  mouth.  'Twas  well  said  by  the  fellow  that  was 
to  make  a  speech  for  my  lord  mayor,  that  he  desired  first 
to  take  measure  of  his  lordship's  mouth." 

Few  things  are  more  interesting  in  the  study  of  a  lan- 
guage, than  to  note  how  much  it  gains  by  time  and 
culture.  In  its  vocabulary,  its  forms,  and  its  euphonic  and 
other  changes,  it  embodies  the  mental  growth  and  modifi- 
cations of  thousands  of  minds.  It  enriches  itself  with  all 
the  intellectual  spoils  of  the  people  that  use  it,  and  with 
the  lapse  of  years  is  gradually  deepened,  mellowed,  and 
refined.  The  language  of  an  old  and  highly  civilized 
people  differs  from  that  of  its  infanc}",  as  much  as  a  broad 
and  majestic  river,  bearing  upon  its  bosom  the  commerce 
of  the  world,  differs  from  the  tiny  streamlet  in  which  it 
had  its  origin.  And  yet  it  is  no  less  true  that,  as  Max 
Miiller  has  observed,  since  the  beginning  of  the  world  no 
new  addition  has  ever  been  made  to  the  substantial  ele- 
ments of  speech,  any  more  than  to  the  substantial  elements 
of  nature.  There  is  a  constant  change  in  language,  a 
coming  and  going  of  words;  but  no  man  can  ever  invent 
an  entirely  new  word.     Before,  a  novel  terra  can  be  intro- 


THE    SIGXIFICANCE    OF    \V0RD3.  57 

duced  into  use,  there  must  be  some  connection  with  a 
former  term, —  a  bridge  to  enable  the  mind  to  pass  over 
to  the  new  word.  Equally  true  is  it  that  when  a  vocable 
has  dropped  out  of  the  language, —  has  become  dead  or 
obsolete, —  it  is  almost  as  impossible  to  call  it  ])ack  to  life 
as  it  is  to  restore  to  life  a  deceased  human  being.  Pope, 
it  is  true,  speaks  of  commanding  "  old  words  that  have 
long  slept  to  wake;"  and  Horace  declares  that  many 
words  will  be  born  again  that  have  seemingly  dropped 
into  their  graves.  But  it  is  certain  that,  as  Prof.  Craik 
says,  "  very  little  i-evivification  has  ever  taken  place  in 
human  speech,"  and  that  one  may  more  easily  introduce 
into  a  language  a  dozen  new  words  than  restore  to 
general  use  an  old  one  that  has  been  discarded.  It  is  true 
that  when  Thomson  published  his  "Castle  of  Indolence," 
he  prefixed  to  the  poem  a  list  of  so-called  obsolete  words, 
of  which  not  a  few,  as  "carol,"  "glee,"  "imp,"  "appall," 
"  blazon,"  "  sere,"  are  in  good  standing  to-da}'.  It  is  true, 
also,  that  in  the  first  quarter  of  this  century  Coleridge, 
Byron,  Keats,  Scott,  and  other  poets,  enriched  their  vocab- 
ularies with  words  taken  from  the  more  archaic  and 
obsolescent  element  of  tlie  language,  and  that  we  have  in 
use  many  words  that  were  more  or  less  neglected  during 
the  eighteenth  century.  But  in  nearly  all  these  cases  it  is 
probable  that  the  vocables  thus  recalled  to  a  living  and 
working  condition,  were  never  actually  dead,  but  only  in 
a  state  of  suspended  animation. 

It  has  been  calculated  that  our  English  language, 
including  the  nomenclature  of  the  arts  and  sciences,  con- 
tains one  hundred  thousand  words;  yet  of  this  immense 
number  it  is  surprising  how  few  are  in  common  use.  It  is 
a  common  opinion  that  every  Englishman  and  American 


58  words;  tiieiu  use  and  aiuse. 

speaks  En,<,fli.sb,  every  German  Geriiuui,  and  every  French 
man  Fren(;li.  'J'lie  truth  is,  that  each  person  speaks  only 
that  limited  portion  of  the  language  with  which  he  is 
acquainted.  To  the  great  majority  even  of  educated  men, 
three-fourths  of  these  words  are  almost  as  unfamiliar  as 
Greek  or  Choctaw.  Strike  from  the  lexicon  all  the  obso- 
lete or  obsolescent  words;  all  the  words  of  special  arts  or 
professions;  all  the  words  confined  in  their  usage  to  par- 
ticular localities;  all  the  words  of  recent  coinage  which 
have  not  yet  been  naturalized;  all  the  words  which  even 
the  educated  speaker  uses  only  in  homoeopathic  doses, — 
and  it  is  astonishing  into  what  a  manageable  volume  your 
plethoric  Webster  or  Worcester  will  have  shrunk.  It  has 
been  calculated  that  a  child  uses  only  about  one  hundred 
words;  and,  unless  he  belongs  to  the  educated  classes,  he 
will  never  employ  more  than  three  or  four  hundred.  A 
distinguished  American  scholar  estimates  that  few  speakers 
or  writers  use  as  many  as  ten  thousand  words;  ordinary 
pei'sons,  of  fair  intelligence,  not  over  three  or  four  thou- 
sand. Even  the  great  orator,  who  is  able  to  bring  into 
the  field,  in  the  war  of  words,  half  the  vast  array  of 
light  and  heavy  troops  which  the  vocabulary  affords,  3'et 
contents  himself  with  a  far  less  imposing  display  of  verbal 
force.  Even  the  all-knowing  Milton,  whose  wealth  of 
words  seems  amazing,  aiid  whom  Dr.  Johnson  charges 
with  using  a  "  Babylonish  dialect,"  uses  only  eight  thou- 
sand; and  Shakespeare  himself,  "the  ra\"riad-minded,"'  only 
fifteen  thousand.  Each  word,  however,  has  a  variety  of 
meanings,  Avith  more  or  fewer  of  which  every  man  is 
familiar,  so  that  his  knowledge  of  the  language,  which  has 
practically  over  a  million  of  words,  is  far  greater  than  it 
appears.     Still  the  facts  we  have  stated  show  that  the  diffi- 


THE   SIGXIFICANCE   OF    WORDS.  59 

culty  of  mastering  the  vocabulary  of  a  new  tongue  is 
greatly  overrated;  and  they  show,  too,  how  absurd  is  the 
boast  of  every  new  dictionary -maker  that  his  vocabulary 
contains  so  many  thousand  words  more  than  those  of  his 
predecessors.  This  may,  or  may  not,  be  a  merit;  but  it  is 
certain  that  there  is  scarcely  a  page  of  Johnson  that  does 
not  contain  some  word  —  obsolete,  un-English,  or  purely 
scientific  —  that  has  no  business  there;  while  Webster  and 
Worcester  ci'am  them  in  by  hundreds  and  thousands  at  a 
time;  each  doing  his  best  to  load  and  deform  his  pages, 
and  all  the  while  triumphantly  challenging  the  world  to 
observe  how  prodigious  an  advantage  he  has  gained  over 
his  rivals. 

We  are  accustomed  to  go  to  the  dictionary  for  the 
meaning  of  words;  but  it  is  life  that  discloses  to  us  their 
significance  in  all  the  vivid  realities  of  experience.  It  is 
the  actual  world,  with  its  joys  and  sorrows,  its  pleasures 
and  pains,  that  reveals  to  us  their  joyous  or  terrible  mean- 
ings—  meanings  not  to  be  found  in  Worcester  or  Webster. 
Does  the  young  and  light-hearted  maiden  know  the  mean- 
ing of  "sorrow,"  or  the  youth  just  entering  on  a  business 
career  understand  the  significance  of  the  words  "  failure  " 
and  "protest"?  Go  to  the  hod  carrier,  climbing  the  many- 
storied  building  undtn*  a  July  sun,  for  the  meaning  of 
"toil";  and,  for  a  definition  of  "overwork,"  go  to  the  pale 
seamstress  who 

"In  midnijjht's  chill  and  murk 
iSlitches  her  life  into  lu-r  work; 
Bc'iiding  backwards  from  her  toil, 
Lest  her  tears  the  silk  might  soil ; 
!Sli!i|)iiig  from  her  bitter  thought 
Ilcarfs-eiise  and  forget-me  not; 
Satirizing  her  despair 
With  the  emblems  woven  there  I" 


60  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

Ask  the  hoary-headed  debauchee,  banki-upt  in  purse, 
friends,  and  reputation, —  with  disease  rackin^j  every 
liinb, —  for  the  definition  of  "remorse";  and  go  to  the 
bedside  of  the  invalid  for  the  proper  understanding  of 
"health."  Life,  with  its  inner  experience,  reveals  to  us 
the  tremendous  force  of  words,  and  writes  upon  our 
hearts  the  ineflfaeeable  records  of  their  meanings.  Man  is 
a  dictionary,  and  human  experience  the  great  lexicogra- 
pher. Hundreds  of  human  beings  pass  from  their  cradles 
to  their  graves  who  know  not  the  force  of  the  commonest 
terms;  while  to  others  their  terrible  significance  comes 
home  like  an  electric  flash,  and  sends  a  thrill  to  the  inner- 
most fibres  of  their  being. 

To  conclude, —  it  is  one  of  the  marvels  of  language, 
that  out  of  the  twenty  plain  elementary  sounds  of  which 
the  human  voice  is  capable,  have  been  formed  all  the 
articulate  voices  which,  for  six  thousand  or  more  years, 
have  sufficed  to  express  all  the  sentiments  of  the  human 
race.  Few  as  are  these  sounds,  it  has  been  calculated 
that  one  thousand  million  writers,  in  one  thousand  mill- 
ion years,  could  not  write  out  all  the  combinations  of 
the  twenty-four  letters  of  the  alphabet,  if  each  writer 
were  daily  to  write  out  forty  pages  of  them,  and  if  each 
page  should  contain  different  orders  of  the  twenty-four 
letters.  Another  remarkable  fact  is  that  the  vocal  organs 
are  so  constructed  as  to  be  exactly  adapted  to  the  proper- 
ties of  the  atmosphere  which  conveys  their  sounds,  while 
at  the  same  time  the  organs  of  hearing  are  fitted  to 
receive  with  pleasure  the  sounds  conveyed.  Who  can 
estimate  the  misery  that  man  would  experience  were  his 
sense  of  hearing  so  acute  that  the  faintest  whisper  would 


THE   SIGXIFICAXCE    OF    WORDS.  61 

give  liiiii  piiin,  loud  talking  or  laughter  stun  him,  and  a 
peal  of  thunder  strike  him  deaf  or  dead? 

"If  Nature  tlnii:(lcr"d  in  his  opening  cars, 
And  stunn'd  liini  with  tlie  music  of  tlu;  spheres, 
How  would  lie  wisli  that  Heaven  had  left  him  still 
The  whispering  zephyr  and  the  purling  rill  I" 


CHAPTER  II. 


THE    MORALITY    IX    AVORDS. 

Genus  dicendi  imitatur  publicos  mores.  .  •  Xoii  potcs^t  alius  es.se  ingenio, 
alius  animo  color.— Seneca. 

The  world  is  satisfied  with  words;  few  care  to  dive  beneath  the  surface.— 
Pascal. 

Words  are  the  signs  and  symbols  of  things;  and  as  in  accounts,  ciphers  and 
symbols  pass  for  real  sums,  so,  in  the  course  of  human  affairs,  words  and  names 
pass  for  things  themselves.— Robert  South. 

Woe  to  them  that  call  evil  good,  and  good  evil.— Isaiah  v,  20. 

r  I  IHE  fact  that  a  maii'.s  language  i.s  a  part  of  bis  cbarac- 
-*-  ter, —  that  the  Avords  he  use.s  are  an  index  to  his  mind 
and  heart, —  must  have  been  noted  long  before  language 
was  made  a  subject  of  investigation.  "Discourse,"  says 
Quintilian,  "  reveals  character,  and  discloses  the  secret  dis- 
position and  temper;  and  not  without  reason  did  the  Greeks 
teach  that  as  a  man  lived  so  would  he  speak."  Profert 
enim  mores  plerumque  oratio,  et  aiiiini  secr-eta  deter/it.  Nee 
sine  causa  Grceci  jwodiderunt,  ut  vlvat,  qiiemque  etiam  dicere. 
When  a  clock  is  foul  and  disordered,  its  wheels  warped  or 
cogs  broken,  the  bell  hammer  and  the  hands  will  proclaim 
the  fact;  instead  of  being  a  guide,  it  will  mislead,  and, 
while  the  disorder  continues,  will  continually  betray  its 
own  infirmity.  So  when  a  man's  mind  is  disordered  or  his 
heart  corrupted,  there  will  gather  on  his  face  and  in  his 
language  an  expression  corresponding  to  the  irregularities 
within.  There  is,  indeed,  a  physiognomy  in-  the  speech  as 
well  as  in  the  face.     As  physicians  judge  of  the  state  of  the 

63 


THE    MOllALITY    IN    WORDS.  63 

body,  so  may  we  judge  of  the  mind,  by  the  tongue.  Except 
under  peculiar  circumstances,  where  prudence,  shame,  or 
delicacy  seals  the  mouth,  the  objects  dearest  to  the  heart, — 
the  pet  words,  phrases,  or  shibboleths,  the  terms  expressing 
our  strongest  appetencies  and  antipathies, —  will  rise  most 
frequently  to  the  lips;  and  Ben  Jonson,  therefore,  did  not 
exaggerate  in  saying  that  no  glass  renders  a  man's  form 
and  likeness  so  true  as  his  speech.  "  As  a  man  speaks,  so 
he  thinks;  and  as  he  thinketh  in  his  heart,  so  is  he." 

If  a  man  is  clear-headed,  noble-minded,  sincere,  just, 
and  pure  in  thought  and  feeling,  these  qualities  will  be 
symbolized  in  his  words;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  if  he 
has  a  confused  habit  of  thought,  is  mean,  grovelling  and 
hypocritical,  these  characteristics  will  reveal  themselves  in 
his  speech.  The  door  keeper  of  an  alien  household  said  to 
Peter,  "Thou  art  surely  a  Galilean;  thy  speech  bewrayeth 
thee";  and  so,  in  spite  of  all  masks  and  professions,  in 
spite  of  his  reputation,  the  essential  nature  of  every  person 
will  stamp  itself  on  his  language.  How  often  do  the  words 
and  tones  of  a  [irofessedly  religious  man,  who  gives  lib- 
erally to  the  church,  prays  long  and  loud  in  public,  and 
attends  rigidly  to  every  outward  observance,  betray  in 
some  mysterious  way, —  by  some  impalpable  element  which 
we  instinctively  detect,  but  cannot  point  out  to  others, — 
the  utter  worldliness  of  his  character!  How  frequently  do 
words  uttered  volubly,  and  with  a  pleasing  elocution,  affect 
us  as  mere  sounds,  suggesting  only  the  hollowness  and 
unreality  of  the  speaker's  character!  How  often  does  the 
nsn  of  a  single  word  flash  more  light  upon  a  man's  motives 
and  [u-inciples  of  action,  give  a  deeper  insight  into  his 
hnbits  of  thought  and  fcoling,  than  an  cnlii-t'  biography! 
How   often,   when   a  secret  sorrow  preys   upon   the  heart, 


64  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

Avliioli  we  would  fain  hide  fi'om  the  world  bj^  a  smiling 
face,  do  we  betray  it  unconsciously  by  a  trivial  or  paren- 
thetical word!  Fast  locked  do  we  deem  our  liluebeard 
chamber  to  be,  the  key  and  the  secret  of  which  we  have  in 
our  own  possession;  3'^et  all  the  time  a  crimson  stream  is 
flowing  across  the  door  sill,  telling  of  murdered  hope? 
within. 

Out  of  the  immense  magazine  of  words  furnished  by  our 
English  vocabulary, —  embracing  over  a  hundred  thousand 
distinct  terms, —  each  man  selects  his  own  favorite  expres- 
sions, his  own  forms  of  syntax,  by  a  peculiar  law  which  is 
part  of  the  essential  difference  between  him  and  all  other 
men;  and  in  the  verbal  stock  in  trade  of  each  individual 
we  should  find,  could  it  once  be  laid  open  to  us,  a  key  that 
would  unlock  many  of  the  deepest  mysteries  of  his  human- 
ity,— many  of  the  profoundest  secrets  of  his  private  history. 
How  often  is  a  man's  character  revealed  by  the  adjectives 
he  uses!  Like  the  inscriptions  on  a  thermometer,  these 
words  of  themselves  reveal  the  temperament.  The  con- 
scientious man  weighs  his  words  as  in  a  hair-balance;  the 
boaster  and  the  enthusiast  employ  extreme  phrases,  as  if 
there  were  no  degree  but  the  superlative.  The  cautious 
man  uses  words  as  the  rifleman  does  bullets;  he  utters  but 
few  words,  but  they  go  to  the  mark  like  a  gunshot,  and 
then  he  is  silent  again,  as  if  he  were  reloading.  The  dog- 
matist is  known  by  his  sweeping,  emphatic  language,  and 
the  absence  of  all  qualifying  terms,  such  as  "  perhaps  "  and 
"  it  may  be."  The  fact  that  the  word  "  glory  "  predomi- 
nates in  all  of  Bonaparte's  dispatches,  while  in  those  of  his 
great  adversary,  Wellington,  which  fill  twelve  enormous 
volumes,  it  never  once  occurs  —  not  even  after  the  hardest 
won  victory, —  but  "duty,"  "duty,"  is  invariably  named  as 


THE    MORALITY    IN    WORDS.  65 

the  motive  for  every  action,  speaks  volumes  touching  their 
respective  characters.  It  was  to  work  out  the  problem  of 
self-aggrandizement  that  Napoleon  devoted  all  his  colossal 
powers;  and  conscience,  resjwnsibilitij,  and  kindred  terms, 
seem  never  to  have  found  their  wa}^  into  his  vocabular}'. 
Men,  with  their  physical  and  moral  force,  their  bodily 
energies,  and  their  passions,  prejudices,  delusions,  and  en- 
thusiasms, were  to  him  but  as  fuel  to  swell  the  blaze  on  the 
altar  of  that  ambition  of  which  he  was  at  once  the  priest 
and  deity.  Of  duties  to  them  he  never  for  a  moment 
dreamed;  for,  from  the  hot  May-day  of  Lodi  to  the  autum- 
nal night  of  Moscow,  when  he  fled  the  flaming  Kremlin,  he 
seemed  unconscious  that  he  was  himself  a  created  and 
responsible  being. 

An  author's  style  is  an  open  window  through  which 
we  can  look  in  upon  him,  and  estimate  his  character.  The 
cunning  reader  reads  between  the  lines,  and  finds  out 
secrets  about  the  writer,  as  if  he  were  overhearing  his 
soliloquies.  He  marks  the  pet  phrase  or  epithet,  draws 
conclusions  from  asseveration  and  emphasis,  notes  the  half- 
perceptible  sneer  or  insinuation,  detects  the  secret  misery 
that  is  veiled  by  a  jest,  and  learns  the  writer's  idiosyn- 
crasies even  when  he  tries  hardest  to  mask  them.  We 
know  a  passage  from  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  as  we  know  a 
Rembrandt  or  a  Durer.  Macaulay  is  betrayed  by  his 
antitheses,  and  Cicero  by  his  esse  videatur. 

Dr.  Ai'nold  has  strikingly  shown  how  we  may  judge  of 
a  historian  by  his  style,  his  language  being  an  infallible 
index  to  his  character.  "If  it  is  very  heavy  and  cum- 
brous, it  indicates  either  a  dull  man  or  a  pompous  man, 
or  at  least  a  slow  and  awkward  man;  if  it  be  tawdry  and 
full  of  commonplaces  enunciated  with  great  solemnity,  the 


66  WOltDs;    TIlKllC    rsK    AND    AHUSE. 

writer  is  most  likely  a  silly  man;  if  it  be  highly  anti- 
thetical and  full  of  unusual  expressions,  or  artificial  ways 
of  stating  a  plain  thing,  the  writer  is  clearly  an  affected 
man.  ]l'  it  be  ]ilain  and  simple,  always  clear,  but  never 
eloquent,  the  wiiter  may  be  a  very  sensible  man,  but  is 
too  hard  and  dry  to  be  a  veiy  great  man.  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  is  always  elegant,  rich  in  illustrations,  and 
without  the  relief  of  simple  and  great  passages,  we  must 
admire  the  writer's  genius  in  a  very  high  degree,  but 
we  may  fear  that  he  is  too  continually  excited  to  have 
attained  to  the  highest  wisdom,  for  that  is  necessarily 
calm.  In  this  manner  the  mere  language  of  a  historian 
will  furnish  us  with  something  of  a  key  to  his  mind,  and 
will  tell  us,  or  at  least  give  us  cause  to  presume,  in  what 
his  main  strength  lies,  and  in  what  he  is  deficient."  It 
has  been  said  of  Gibbon's  style  that  it  was  one  in  which 
it  was  impossible  to  speak  the  truth. 

A  writer  in  the  "  Edinburgh  Review "'  observes  that  the 
statement  that  a  man's  language  is  part  of  his  character, 
holds  true,  not  only  in  regard  to  the  usage  of  certain 
shibboleths  of  a  party,  whether  in  religion  or  politics,  but 
also  in  regard  to  a  general  vocabularv.  "  There  is  a  school 
vocabulary  and  a  college  vocabular}-;  certain  phrases 
brought  home  to  astound  and  perplex  the  uninitiated,  and 
passing  now  and  then  into  general  currenc}'.  In  this  age 
of  examinations, —  army,  navy,  civil-service,  and  middle- 
class, —  the  verb  '  to  pluck'  is  well-nigh  incorporated  with 
the  vernacular,  and  must  take  its  place  in  dictionaries. 
The  sportsman  Nimrod  has  his  esoteric  vocabulary,  and  so 
has  likewise  the  angler  Walton.  The  man  of  the  world  has 
his  own  set  of  phrases,  understood  and  i-ecognized  by  the 
fraternity;  and  so  has  the  gourmand;  and  so  also  has  the 


THE    MORALITY    IN   ^VORDS.  67 

fancier  of  wines,  who,  in  diiposition  to  one  of  the  laws  of 
nature,  speaks  to  you  of  wine,  a  fluid,  as  being  'dry.' 
Tlie  conn(ji.sseur  in  painting  tells  you  also  of  'dryness'  in 
a  [liftnrt!,  and  lie  uses  other  terms  wliieli  seoin  as  if  they 
had  been  invented  to  puzzle  the  uninitiated.  Your  favorite 
landscape  may  have  'tones'  in  it,  as  well  as  your  violin. 
With  shoulders  that  are  'broad,'  and  with  cloth  that  is 
'broad'  covering  those  broad  shoulders,  you  stand  and 
observe  that  a  painting  is  '  broad.'  You  sit  down  at  dinner 
with  a 'delicious  bit'  of  venison  before  you  on  the  table, 
and  looking  up  see  a  'delicious  bit'  of  Watteau  or 
Wouvermans  before  you  on  the  wall." 

As  with  individuals,  so  with  nations:  the  language  of 
a  people  is  often  a  moral  Itarometer,  which  marks  with 
marvellous  precision  the  rise  or  fall  of  the  national  life. 
The  stock  of  words  composing  any  language  corresponds 
to  the  knowledge  of  the  community  that  speaks  it,  and 
shows  with  what  objects  it  is  familiar,  what  generalizations 
it  has  made,  what  distinctions  it  has  drawn, —  all  its  cog- 
nitions and  reasonings,  in  the  worlds  of  matter  and  of 
mind.  "  As  our  material  condition  varies,  as  our  ways 
of  life,  our  institutions,  public  and  private,  become  other 
than  they  have  been,  all  is  necessarily  reflected  in  our 
language.  In  these  days  of  railroads,  steamboats  and 
telegraphs,  of  sun  pictures,  of  chemistry  and  geology,  of 
improved  wearing  stuffs,  furniture,  styles  of  building, 
articles  of  food  and  luxury  of  every  description,  how^ 
many  words  and  phrases  are  in  every  one's  mouth  which 
would  be  utterly  unintelligible  to  the  most  learned  man 
of  a  century  ago,  were  he  to  rise  from  his  grave  and  walk 
our  streets!  .  .  .  Language  is  expanded  and  contracted  in 
precise  adaptation  to  the  circumstances  and  needs  of  those 


68  words;  tiiimk  rsi-:  and  abuse. 

who  use  it;  it  is  enriclied  or  iiiipoverislied,  in  every 
part,  along  with  the  enrichment  or  impoverishment 
of  their  minds."  *  Every  race  has  its  own  organic 
growth,  its  own  characteristic  ideas  and  opinions,  whieli 
are  impressed  on  its  political  constitution,  its  legisla- 
tion, its  manners  and  its  customs,  its  modes  of  religious 
worship;  and  the  expression  of  all  these  peculiarities  is 
found  in  its  speech.  If  a  people  is,  as  Milton  said  of  the 
English,  a  noble  and  a  puissant  nation,  of  a  quick,  ingen- 
ious, and  piercing  spirit,  acute  to  invent  and  subtle  to 
discourse,  its  language  will  exhibit  all  these  qualities; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  if  it  is  frivolous  and  low- 
thougbted, —  if  it  is  morally  bankrupt  and  dead  to  all 
lofty  sentiments, —  its  mockery  of  virtue,  its  inability  to 
comprehend  the  true  dignity  and  meaning  of  life,  Ihe 
feebleness  of  its  moral  indignation,  will  all  inevitably 
betray  themselves  in  its  speech,  as  truly  as  would  the 
opposite  qualities  of  spirituality  of  thought  and  exaltation 
of  soul.  These  discreditable  qualities  will  find  an  utter- 
ance "in  the  use  of  solemn  and  earnest  words  in  senses 
comparatively  trivial  or  even  ridiculous;  in  the  squander- 
ing of  such  as  ought  to  have  been  reserved  for  the  highest 
mysteries  of  the  spiritual  life,  on  slight  and  secular  objects; 
and  in  the  employment,  almost  in  jest  and  play,  of  words 
implying  the  deepest  moral  guilt." 

Could  anything  be  more  significant  of  the  profound 
degradation  of  a  people  than  the  abject  character  of  the 
complimentary  and  social  dialect  of  the  Italians,  and  the 
pompous  appellations  with  which  they  dignify  things  in 
themselves  insignificant,  as  w'ell  as  their  constant  use  of 
intensives  and  superlatives  on  the  most  trivial  occasions? 

*  "Language  and  the  Study  of  Language,"  by  W.  D.  Whitney. 


THE    MORALITY    IN    WORDS.  69 

Is  it  not  a  notable  fact  that  they,  who  for  so  long  a  time 
had  no  country, —  on  whose  altars  the  fires  of  patriotism 
have,  till  of  late,  burned  so  feebly, —  use  the  word  j)eUe- 
yrino,  "foreign,"  as  a  synonym  for  "excellent"?  Might 
we  not  almost  infer  a  priori  the  servile  condition  to  which, 
previous  to  their  late  uprising,  centuries  of  tyranny  had 
reduced  them,  from  the  fact  that  with  the  same  people,  so 
many  of  whom  are  clothed  in  rags,  a  man  of  honor  is 
"a  well  dressed  man";  that  a  man  who  murders  in  secret 
is  "  a  brave  man,"  bravo;  that  a  virtuoso,  or  "  virtuous  man," 
is  one  who  is  accomplished  in  music,  painting,  and  sculpt- 
ure,—  arts  which  should  be  the  mere  ei\ibroidery,  and  not 
the  web  and  woof,  of  a  nation's  life;  that,  in  their  mag- 
nificent indigence,  they  call  a  cottage  with  three  or  four 
acres  of  land  un  podere,  "a  power";  that  tliey  term  every 
house  with  a  large  door  nn  palazzo,''^  di  palace,'"  a  lamb's  fry 
una  cosa  stupeuda,  "  a  stupendous  thing,"  and  that  a  message 
sent  by  a  footman  to  his  tailor  through  a  scullion  is  una 
amhasciata,  "an  embassy"? 

Let  us  not,  however,  infer  the  hopeless  depravity  of 
any  people  from  the  baseness  of  the  tongue  they  have 
inherited,  not  chosen.  It  makes  a  vast  difference,  as  Prof. 
Marsh  justly  observes,  whether  words  expressive  of  noble 
thoughts  and  mighty  truths  do  not  exist  in  a  language, 
or  whether  ages  of  soul-crushing  tyranny  have  compelled 
their  disuse,  and  the  employment  of  the  baser  part  of  the 
national  vocabulary.  The  mighty  events  that  have  lately 
taken  place  in  Italy  "  show  that  a  tone  of  hypocrisy  may 
cling  to  the  tongue,  long  after  the  spirit  of  a  nation  is 
emancipated,  and  that  where  grand  words  are  found  in 
a  speech,  thei-e  grand  thoughts,  noble  purposes,  high 
resolves  exist  also;  or,  at  least,  the  spark  slumbers  which 


70  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

a    favoring    breath    may,   at   any    moment,   kindle    into  a 
cherisliing  and  devouring  flame."  * 

A  late  writer  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  French 
language,  while  it  has  such  positive  expressions  as  "drunk" 
and  "  tipsy,"  conveyed  by  ivre  and  gris,  contains  no  such 
negative  term  as  "sober."  Sohre  means  always  "temper- 
ate" or  "abstemious,"  never  the  opposite  condition  to 
intoxication.  The  English,  it  is  argued,  drink  enough  to 
need  a  special  illustrative  title  for  a  man  who  has  not 
drunk;  but  though  the  Parisians  began  to  drink  alcohol 
freely  during  the  sieges,  the  French  have  never  yet  felt 
the  necessity  of  forming  any  such  curious  subjective  ap- 
pellation, consequently  they  do  not  possess  it.  Again,  the 
French  boast  that  they  have  no  such  word  as  "  bribe,"  as 
if  this  implied  their  exemption  from  that  sin;  and  such, 
indeed,  may  be  the  fact.  But  may  not  the  absence  of  this 
word  from  their  vocabulary  prove,  on  the  contrary,  their 
lack  of  sensibility  to  the  heinous  nature  of  the  oflfense, 
just  as  the  lack  of  the  word  "  humility,"  in  the  language  of 
the  Greeks,  usually  so  rich  in  terms,  proves  that  they 
lacked  the  thing  itself,  or  as  the  fact  that  the  same  people 
had  no  word  corresponding  to  the  Latin  ineptus,  argues, 
as  Cicero  thought,  not  that  the  character  designated  by 
the  word  was  wanting  among  them,  but  that  the  fault 
was  so  universal  with  them  that  they  failed  to  recognize 
it  as  such?  Is  it  not  a  great  defect  in  a  language  that 
it  lacks  the  words  by  which  certain  forms  of  baseness  or 
sinfulness,  in  those  who  speak  it,  may  be  brought  home 
to  their  consciousness?  Can  we  properly  hate  or  abhor 
any  wicked  act  till  we  have  given  it  a  specific  objective 
existence  by  giving  it  a  name  which  shall  at  once  desig- 

*  •'  Lectures  on  the  English  Language." 


THE    MORALITY    IX    WORDS.  71 

nate  and  condemn  it?  The  pot-dc-vin,  and  other  jesting 
phrases  which  the  French  have  coined  to  denote  bribery, 
can  have  no  effect  but  to  encourage  this  wrong. 

What  shall  we  think  of  the  fact  that  the  French  lan- 
guage has  no  word  equivalent  to  "listener"?  Is  it  not 
a  noteworthy  circumstance,  shedding  light  upon  national 
character,  that  among  thirty-seven  millions  of  talkers,  no 
provision,  except  the  awkward  paraphrase,  celui  qui  ecoute, 
"  he  who  hears,''  should  have  been  made  for  hearers  ? 
Is  there  any  other  explanation  of  this  blank  than  the 
supposition  that  every  Frenchman  talks  from  the  pure 
love  of  talking,  and  not  to  be  heard;  that,  reversing  the 
proverb,  he  believes  that  silence  is  silver,  but  talking 
is  golden;  and  that,  not  caring  whether  he  is  listened  to 
or  not,  he  has  never  recognized  that  he  has  no  name  for 
the  person  to  whom  he  chatters?  Again,  is  it  not  remark- 
able that,  among  the  French,  honhoninte.  "a  good  man,"  is 
a  term  of  contempt;  that  the  fearful  Hebrew  word, 
"  gehenna,"  has  been  condensed  into  (jene,  and  means  only 
a  petty  annoyance;  and  that  Jiouiittetc,  which  once  meant 
honesty,  now  means  only  civility?  It  was  in  the  latter 
half  of  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV  that  the  word  honnete 
exchanged  its  primitive  for  its  present  meaning.  Till  then, 
according  to  good  authority,  when  a  man's  descent  was 
said  to  be  honnete,  he  was  complimented  on  the  virtuous- 
ness  of  his  progenitors,  not  reminded  of  the  mediocrity 
of  their  condition;  and  when  the  same  term  was  applied 
to  his  family,  it  was  an  acknowledgment  that  they  be- 
longed to  the  middle  ranks  of  society,  not  a  suggestion 
that  they  were  plebeians.  Again,  how  significant  is  the 
fact  that  the  French  has  no  such  words  as  "  home," 
"comfort,"  "spiritual,"  and  but  one  word  for  "love"  and 


73  WORPS;    TIIFIR    USE    AXn    ABUSE. 

"like,"  compelling  them  to  put  Heaven's  last  gift  to  man 
on  a  par  with  an  article  of  diet;  as  "I  love  Julia," — "I 
love  a  leg  of  mutton"!  Couple  with  these  peculiarities 
of  the  language  the  circumstance  that  the  French  term 
spirituel  means  simply  witty,  with  a  certain  quickness, 
delicacy,  and  versatility  of  mind,  and  have  you  not  a  real 
insight  into  the  national  character? 

It  is  said  that  the  word  oftenest  on  a  Frenchman's  lips 
is  la  gloire,  and  next  to  that,  perhaps,  is  liriUant,  "  brilliant." 
The  utility  of  a  feat  or  achievement  in  literature  or  science, 
in  war  or  politics,  surgery  or  mechanics,  is  of  little  moment 
in  his  eyes  unless  it  also  dazzles  and  excites  surprise.  It  is 
said  that  Sir  Astley  Cooper,  the  great  British  surgeon,  on 
visiting  the  French  capital,  was  asked  by  the  surgeon  en 
chef  of  the  empire  how  many  times  he  had  performed  some 
feat  of  surgery  that  required  a  rare  union  of  dexterity  and 
nerve.  He  replied  that  he  had  performed  the  operation 
thirteen  times.  "Ah!  but.  Monsieur,  I  have  performed 
him  one  hundred  and  sixty  time.  How  many  time  did  you 
save  his  life?"  continued  the  curious  Frenchman,  as  he 
saw  the  blank  amazement  of  Sir  Astley's  face.  "  I,"  said 
the  Englishman,  "saved  eleven  out  of  the  thirteen.  How 
many  did  you  save  out  of  a  hundred  and  sixty?"  "Ah! 
Monsieur,  I  lose  dem  all;  —  but  de  operation  was  very 
hrUlcmtr' 

The  author  of  "  Pickwick  "  tells  us  that  in  America  the 
sign  vocal  for  starting  a  coach,  steamer,  railway  train,  etc., 
is  "Go  Ahead!"  while  with  John  Bull  the  ritual  form  is 
"All  Right!" — and  he  adds  that  these  two  expressions  are 
somewhat  expressive  of  the  respective  moods  of  the  two 
nations.  The  two  phrases  are,  indeed,  vivid  miniatures 
of  John   Bull    and    his    restless   brother,   who  sits   on   the 


THE    MORALITY    IN    WORDS.  73 

safety  valve  that  be  may  travel  faster,  pours  oil  and  rosin 
into  his  steam  furnaces,  leaps  from  the  cars  before  thoy  have 
entered  the  station,  and  who  would  hardly  object  to  being 
fired  off  from  a  cannon  or  in  a  bombshell,  provided  there 
were  one  chance  in  fifty  of  getting  sooner  to  the  end  of  his 
journey.  Let  us  hope  that  the  day  may  yet  come  when 
our  "two-forty"  people  will  exchange  a  little  of  their  fiery 
activity  for  a  bit  of  IJulTs  caution,  and  when  our  Yankee 
Herald's  College,  if  we  ever  have  one,  may  declare  "  All 
Right!"  to  be  the  motto  of  our  political  escutcheon,  with 
as  much  propriety  as  it  might  now  inscribe  "Go  Ahead!" 
beneath  that  fast  fowl,  the  annexing  and  screaming  eagle, 
that  hovers  over  the  peaks  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  dips 
its  wings  in  two  oceans,  and  has  one  eye  on  Cuba  and  the 
other  on  Quebec. 

A  volume  might  be  filled  with  illustrations  of  the  truth 
that  the  language  of  nations  is  a  mirror,  in  which  may 
be  seen  reflected  with  unerring  accuracy  all  the  elements 
of  their  intellectual  as  well  as  of  their  moral  character. 
What  scholar  that  is  familiar  with  Greek  and  Latin  has 
failed  to  remark  how  indelibly  the  contrariety  of  character 
in  the  two  most  civilized  nations  of  antiquity  is  impressed 
on  their  languages,  distinguished  as  is  the  one  by  exuberant 
originality,  the  other  by  innate  poverty  of  thought?  In 
the  Greek,  that  most  flexible  and  perfect  of  all  the  Euro- 
pean tongues,  —  which  surpasses  every  other  alike  in  its 
metaphysical  subtlety,  its  wealth  of  inflections,  and  its 
capacity  for  rendering  the  minutest  and  most  delicate 
shades  of  meaning, —  the  thought  controls  and  shapes  the 
language;  while  the  tyrannous  objectivity  of  the  Latin, 
rigid  and  almost  cruel,  like  the  nation  whose  voice  it  is, 
and  whose  words  arc  always  Sic  rolo,  sic  jnhio,  sfcf  pro 


74  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

ratione  voluntas,  coerces  rather  than  simply  syllables  the 
thought.  "  Greek,"  says  Henry  Nelson  Coleridge,  "  the 
shrine  of  the  genius  of  the  old  world;  as  universal  as  our 
race,  as  individual  as  ourselves;  of  infinite  flexibility,  of 
indefatigable  strength;  with  the  complication  and  distinct- 
ness of  nature  herself;  to  which  nothing  was  vulgar,  from 
which  nothing  was  excluded;  speaking  to  the  ear  like 
Italian,  speaking  to  the  mind  like  English;  at  once  the 
variety  and  picturesqueness  of  Homer,  the  gloom  and 
intensity  of  ^Eschylus;  not  compressed  to  the  closest  by 
Thucydides,  not  fathomed  to  the  bottom  by  Plato,  not 
sounding  with  all  its  thunders,  nor  lit  up  with  all  its 
ardors  under  the  Promethean  touch  of  Demosthenes  him- 
self. And  Latin,  —  the  voice  of  Empire  and  of  Law,  of 
War  and  of  the  State,  —  the  best  language  for  the  meas- 
ured research  of  History,  and  the  indignant  declamation 
of  moral  satire;  rigid  in  its  constructions,  parsimonious 
in  its  synonyms;  yet  majestic  in  its  bareness,  impressive 
in  its  conciseness;  the  true  language  of  history,  instinct 
with  the  spirit  of  nations,  and  not  with  the  passions  of 
individuals;  breathing  the  maxims  of  the  world,  and  not. 
the  tenets  of  the  schools;  one  and  uniform  in  its  air  and 
spirit,  whether  touched  by  the  stern  and  haughty  Sallust, 
by  the  open  and  discursive  Livy,  by  the  reserved  and 
thoughtful  Tacitus." 

It  is  a  noteworthy  fact  that,  as  the  Romans  were  the 
most  majestic  of  nations,  so  theirs  is  the  only  ancient 
language  that  contains  the  word  "majesty,"  the  Greek  hav- 
ing nothing  that  exactly  corresponds  to  it;  and  the  Latin 
language  is  as  majestic  as  were  the  Romans  themselves. 
Cicero,  or  some  other  Latin  writer,  finds  an  argument  to 
show  that  the  intellectual  character  of   the  Romans  was 


THE    MOKxiLlTY    IX    WORDS.  75 

higher  than  that  of  the  Greeks,  in  the  fact  that  the  word 
conviviion  means  "  a  living  together,"  while  the  corre- 
sponding Greek  term,  (rup-Toutov^  means  "a  drinking  togeth- 
er." While  the  Romans  retained  their  early  simplicity  and 
nobility  of  soul,  their  language  was  full  of  power  and 
truth;  but  when  they  became  luxurious,  sensual,  and  cor- 
rupt, their  words  degenerated  into  miserable  and  meaning- 
less counters,  without  intrinsic  value,  and  serving  only  as 
a  conventional  medium  of  exchange.  It  has  been  said 
truly  that  "  in  the  pedantry  of  Statins,  in  the  puerility 
of  Martial,  in  the  conceits  of  Seneca,  in  the  poets  who 
would  go  into  emulous  raptures  on  the  beauty  of  a  lap- 
dog  and  the  apotheosis  of  a  eunuch's  hair,  we  read  the 
hand-writing  of  an  empire's  condemnation." 

The  climate  of  a  country,  as  well  as  the  mind  and 
character  of  its  people,  is  clearly  revealed  in  its  speech. 
The  air  men  breathe,  the  temperature  in  which  they  live, 
and  the  natural  scenery  amid  which  they  pass  their  lives, 
acting  incessantly  upon  body  and  mind,  and  especially 
upon  the  organs  of  speech,  impart  to  them  a  soft  or  a 
harsh  expression.  The  languages  of  the  South,  as  we 
should  expect  them  to  be,  "are  limpid,  euphonic,  and 
harmonious,  as  though  they  had  received  an  impress  from 
the  transparency  of  their  heaven,  and  the  soft  sweet  sounds 
of  the  winds  that  sigh  among  the  woods.  On  the  other 
hand,  in  tlie  hirrients  and  gutturals,  the  burr  and  rough- 
ness of  the  Northern  tongues,  we  catch  an  echo  of  the 
breakers  bursting  on  their  crags,  and  the  crashing  of  tlie 
pine  branch  over  the  cataract."  The  idiom  of  Sybaris 
cannot  Ije  that  of  Sparta.  The  Attic  Greek  was  softer  than 
the  Doric,  the  dialect  of  the  mountains;  the  Ionic,  spoken 
in  the  voluptuous  regions  of  Asia  Minor,   was   softer  and 


76  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

more  sinuous  than  the  Attic.  The  Anglo-Saxon,  the  lan- 
guage of  a  people  conversant  chiefly  with  gloomy  forests 
and  stormy  seas,  and  prone  to  silence,  was  naturally  harsh 
and  monosyllabic.  The  roving  sea-king  of  Scandinavia, 
cradled  on  the  ocean  and  rocked  by  its  storms,  could  no 
more  speak  in  the  soft  and  melting  accents  of  a  Southern 
tongue  than  the  screaming  eagle  could  utter  the  liquid 
melody  of  a  nightingale's  song. 

It  is  said  that  in  the  South  Sea  Islands  version  of  the 
New  Testament  there  are  whole  chapters  with  no  words 
ending  in  consonants,  except  the  proper  names  of  the 
original.  Italian  has  been  called  the  love-talk  of  the 
Roman  without  his  armor.  Fuller,  contrasting  the  Italians 
and  the  Swiss,  quaintly  remarks  that  the  former,  "  whose 
country  is  called  '  the  country  of  good  words,'  love  the 
circuits  of  courtesy,  that  an  ambassador  should  not,  as  a 
sparrow  hawk,  fly  outright  to  his  prey,  and  meddle  pres- 
ently with  the  matter  in  hand;  but,  like  the  noble  falcon, 
mount  in  language,  soar  high,  fetch  compasses  of  compli- 
ment, and  then  in  due  time  stoop  to  game,  and  seize  on 
the  business  propounded.  Clean  contrary,  the  Switzers 
(who  sent  word  to  the  king  of  France  not  to  send  them 
an  ambassador  with  stores  of  words,  but  a  treasurer  with 
plenty  of  money)  count  all  words  quite  out  which  are  not 
straight  on,  have  an  antipathy  against  eloquent  language, 
the  flowei'S  of  rhetoric  being  as  offensive  to  them  as  sweet 
perfume  to  such  as  are  troubled  with  the  mother;  yea, 
generally,  great  soldiers  have  their  stomachs  sharp  set  to 
feed  on  the  matter;  loathing  long  speeches,  as  wherein 
they  conceive  themselves  to  lose  time,  in  which  they  could 
conquer  half  a  country;  and,  counting  bluntness  their  best 
eloquence,  love  to  be  accosted  in  their  own  kind." 


TlIK    MOKALITY    I  NT    WORDS.  77 

It  is  in  the  idioms  of  a  people,  its  peculiar  turns  of 
expression,  and  the  modifications  of  meaning  which  its 
borrowed  words  have  undergone,  that  its  distinctive  genius 
is  most  strikingly  seen.  The  forms  of  salutation  used  by 
different  nations  are  saturated  with  their  idiosyncrasies, 
and  of  themselves  alone  essentially  reveal  their  respective 
characters.  How  clearly  is  the  innermost  distinction  be- 
tween the  Greek  mind  and  the  Hebrew  brought  out  in 
their  respective  salutations,  "  Rejoice  I  "  and  "  Peace !  "  How 
vividly  are  contrasted,  in  the  two  salutations,  the  sunny, 
world-enjoying  temper  of  the  one  people  with  the  profound 
religious  feeling  of  the  other!  The  formula  of  the  robust, 
energetic,  valiant  Roman, —  with  whom  virtue  was  manli- 
ness, and  whose  value  was  measured  by  his  valor, —  was 
Salve  !  Vale  !  that  is,  "  Be  well,"-  "  Be  strong."  In  the 
expression,  "If  (lod  will  it,  you  are  well,"  is  betrayed  the 
fatalism  of  the  Arab;  while  the  greeting  of  the  Turk, 
"May  your  shadow  never  be  less!"  speaks  of  a  sunny 
clime.  In  the  hot,  oppressive  climate  of  Egypt  persi)iration 
is  essential  to  health,  and  you  are  asked,  "  How  do  you 
perspire?"  The  Italian  asks.  Come  sta?  literally,  "How 
does  he  stand?"  an  expression  originally  referring  to  the 
aldHd/iif/  of  the  Lombard  merchants  in  the  market  place, 
and  wliich  seems  to  indicate  that  one's  well-being  or  health 
depends  on  his  business  prosi)erity.  Some  writei-s,  how- 
ever, have  regarded  the  word  "stand"  in  this  formula  as 
meaning  no  mori!  Ilian  "exist";  jnero  life  its(^lf,  in  the 
land  of  far  iiirnlc,  being  a  blessing.  The  Genoese,  a 
trading  people,  and  at  one  time  the  bankers  of  Europe, 
used  in  former  days  to  say,  Saiiita  e  f/H(i<la(/iio,  or 
"Health  and  gain!"  a  phrase  in  which  the  ideals  of  the 
countrymen  of  Columbus   are   tersely   summed    up.     The 


78  words;  their  use  and  aruse. 

dreamy,  meditative  German,  dwelling  amid  smoke  and 
abstractions,  salutes  you  with  tlie  vaguo,  impersonal, 
metaphysical  Wie  r/ehts  ? — "How  goes  it?"  Another 
salutation  which  he  uses  is,  ]]^ie  bp/iii<Ien  aie  sick?  — 
"How  do  you  find  yourself?"  A  born  philosopher,  he  is 
so  absent-minded,  so  lost  in  thought  and  clouds  of  tobacco 
smoke,  that  he  thinks  you  cannot  tell  him  of  the  state  of- 
your  health  till  you  have  searched  for  and/o?W(^  it. 

The  trading  Hollander,  who  scours  the  world,  asks. 
Hoe  vaarfs-ge?  "How  do  you  go?"  an  expression  emi- 
nently characteristic  of  a  trading,  travelling  people, 
devoted  to  business,  and  devoid  of  sentiment.  The 
thoughtful  Swede  inquires,  "  How  do  you  think?"  They 
also  inquire,  Hur  mar  ni? — literally  "How  can  you?" 
that  is,  "Are  you  strong?"  The  lively,  restless,  viva- 
cious Frenchman,  who  lives  in  other  people's  eyes,  and 
is  more  anxious  about  appearances  than  about  realities, 
—  who  has  never  to  hunt  himself  up  like  the  German, 
and  desires  less  to  do,  like  the  Anglo-Saxon,  than  to  be 
lively,  to  show  himself, —  says  frankly,  Comment  voiis 
portez-vous? — "How  do  j'ou  carry  yourself?"  In  these 
few  words  we  have  the  pith  and  essence,  the  very  soul, 
of  the  French  character.  Externals,  the  shapes  and 
shows  of  things, —  for  what  else  could  we  expect  a  peo- 
ple to  be  solicitous,  who  are  born  actoi'S,  and  who  live, 
to  a  great  extent,  for  stage  effect;  who  unite  so  much 
outward  refinement  with  so  much  inward  coarseness; 
who  have  an  exquisite  taste  for  the  ornamental,  and  an 
almost  savage  ignorance  of  the  comfortable;  who  invented, 
as  Emerson  says,  the  dickey,  but  left  it  to  the  English  to 
add  the  shirt  ?  It  has  been  said  that  a  man  would  be 
owl-blind,    who   in    the    "  Hoo's   a'  wi'  ye "  of  the  kindly 


THE    MOJJALITY    IX    AVORDS.  79 

Scot,  could  not  perceive  the  mixture  of  national  pawki- 
ness  with  hospitable  cordialit\\  "One  sees,  in  the  mind's 
eye,  the  canny  chield,  who  would  invite  you  to  dinner 
three  days  in  the  week,  but  who  would  look  twice  at 
your  bill  before  he  discounted  it."  What  can  be  more 
unmistakably  chai'acteristic  tlian  the  Irish  peasant's 
"Long  life  to  your  honor;  may  you  make  your  bed  in 
glory!"  After  such  a  grandiose  salute,  we  need  no 
mouser  among  the  records  of  antiquity  to  certify  to  us 
that  the  Hibernian  is  of  Oriental  origin,  nor  do  we  need 
any  other  key  to  his  peculiar  vivacity  and  impression- 
ableness  of  feeling,  his  rollicking,  daredevil,  hyperbole- 
loving  enthusiasm.  Finally,  of  all  the  national  forms 
of  salutation,  the  most  signally  characteristic, —  the  one 
which  reveals  the  ver}'  core,  the  inmost  "heart  of  heart" 
of  a  people, —  is  the  Englishman's  "How  do  you  do?"  In 
these  four  little  monosyllables  the  activit}-,  the  intense 
practicality  of  the  Englishman,  the  very  quintessence  of 
his  character,  are  revealed  as  by  a  lightning's  flash.  To 
do!  Not  to  think,  to  stand,  to  carry  yourself,  but  to  do; 
and  this  doing  is  so  universal  among  the  English, —  its 
necessity  is  so  completely  recognized, —  that  no  one 
dreams  of  asking  whether  you  are  doing,  or  what  you 
are  doing,  but  all  demand,  "  How  do  you  do?  " 

It  has  been  well  observed  by  the  learned  German' 
writer,  J.  D.  Michaelis,  that  "some  virtues  are  more  sed- 
ulously cultivated  by  moralists,  when  llie  language  has 
tit  names  for  indicating  them;  whereas  they  arc  but 
superficially  treated  of,  or  rather  neglected,  in  nations 
where  such  virtues  have  not  so  much  as  a  name.  Lan- 
guages may  obviously  do  injury  to  morals  and  religion  by 
their  equivocation;    by   false  accessories,  inseparable   from 


80  words;   TiivAK  rsH  and  abuse, 

the  principal  idea;  and  by  their  poverty."  It  is  a  strik- 
ing fact,  noted  by  an  English  traveller,  that  the  native 
language  of  Van  Dieman's  Land  has  four  w^ords  to 
express  the  idea  of  taking  life,  not  one  of  which  indi- 
cates the  deep-lying  distinction  between  to  kill  and  to 
murder;  while  any  word  for  love  is  wanting  to  it  alto- 
gether. One  of  the  most  formidable  obstacles  which 
Christian  missionaries  have  encountered  in  teaching  the 
doctrines  and  precepts  of  the  Gospel  to  the  heathen,  has 
been  the  absence  from  their  languages  of  a  spiritual  and 
ethical  nomenclature.  It  is  in  vain  that  the  religious 
teachers  of  a  people  present  to  them  a  doctrinal  or  ethical 
system  inculcating  virtues  and  addressed  to  faculties, 
whose  very  existence  their  language,  and  consequently 
the  conscious  self-knowledge  of  the  people,  do  not  recog- 
nize. Equally  vain  is  it  to  reprehend  vices  which  have 
no  name  by  Avhich  they  can  be  described  and  denounced, 
as  things  to  be  loathed  and  shunned.  Hence,  in  trans- 
lating the  Bible  into  the  languages  of  savage  nations,  the 
translators  have  been  compelled  to  employ  merely  provis- 
ional phrases,  until  they  could  develop  a  dialect  fitted  to 
convey  moral  as  well  as  intellectual  truth.  It  is  said  that 
the  Ethiopians,  having  but  one  word  for  "  person "'  and 
"  nature,"  could  not  apprehend  the  doctrine  of  the  union 
of  Christ's  two  natures  in  one  single  person.  There  are 
languages  of  considerable  cultivation  in  which  it  is  not 
easy  to  find  a  term  for  the  Supreme  Being.  Seneca 
wrote  a  treatise  on  "  Providence,"  which  had  not  even  a 
name  at  Rome  in  the  time  of  Cicero.  It  is  a  curious 
fact  that  the  English  language,  rich  as  it  is  in  words  to 
express  the  most  comjilex  religious  ideas,  as  well  as  in 
terms    characterizing   vices    and    crimes,   had    until    about 


THE    MOIIALITY    IN    WORDS.  81 

two  centuries  ago  no  word  for  ''.selfi.slme.ss,"  the  root  of 
all  vices,  nor  any  single  word  for  "suicide.*'  The  Greeks 
and  Ronuins  had  a  clear  conception  of  a  moral  ideal,  but 
the  Christian  idea  of  "  sin  ''  was  utterly  unknown  to  the 
I'agan  mind.  Vice  they  regarded  as  simply  a  relaxed 
energy  of  the  will,  lj\'  which  it  yielded  to  the  allui"e- 
ments  of  sensual  pleasure;  and  rirtixe,  literally  "manli- 
ness," was  the  determined  spirit,  the  courage  and  vigor 
with  which  it  resisted  such  temptations.  But  the  idea 
of  ■■  holiness"  and  the  antithetic  idea  of  sin  were  such  utter 
strangers  to  the  Pagan  mind  that  it  would  have  been 
impossible  to  express  them  in  either  of  the  classical 
tongues  of  antit^uity.  As  De  Maistre  has  strikingly 
observed,  man  knew  well  that  he  could  "irritate"  God  or 
"a  god,"  but  not  that  he  could  "  offend  "  him.  The  words 
"crime"  and  "criminal"  belong  to  all  languages:  those  of 
"  sin  "  and  "  sinner  "  belong  only  to  the  Christian  tongue. 
For  a  similar  reason,  man  could  always  call  God  "Father," 
which  expresses  only  a  relation  of  creation  and  of  power; 
but  no  man,  of  his  own  strength,  could  say  "  my  Father " ! 
for  this  is  a  relation  of  love,  foreign  even  to  Mount  Sinai, 
and  which  belongs  only  to  Calvary. 

Again,  the  Greek  language,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
had  no  term  for  the  Christian  virtue  of  "humility";  and 
when  the  apostle  Paul  coined  one  for  it,  he  had  to  em- 
ploy a  root  conveying  the  idea,  not  of  self-abasement 
before  a  just  and  holy  God,  but  of  positive  debasement 
and  meanness  of  spirit.  On  the  other  liand,  there  is  a 
word  in  our  own  tongue  which,  as  De  Quinccy  observes, 
cannot  be  rendered  adequately  either  by  German  or  Greek, 
the  two  richest  of  human  languages,  and  without  which 
we  shouM  all  be  disarmed  for  one  great  case,  continually 
G 


82  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

recurrent,  of  social  enormity.  It  is  the  word  "  humbug." 
"A  vast  mass  of  villany,  that  cannot  otherwise  be  reached 
by  legal  penalties,  or  brought  within  the  rhetoric  of  scorn, 
would  go  at  large  with  absolute  impunity,  were  it  not 
through  the  stern  lihadanianthian  aid  of  this  virtuous 
and  inexorable  word." 

There  is  no  way  in  which  men  so  often  become  the 
victims  of  error  as  by  an  imperfect  understanding  of  cer- 
tain words  which  are  artfully  used  by  their  superiors. 
Cynicism  is  seldom  shallower  than  when  it  sneers  at  what 
it  contemptuously  calls  the  power  of  words  over  the  popu- 
lar imagination.  If  men  are  agreed  about  things,  what, 
it  is  asked,  can  be  more  foolish  than  to  dispute  about 
names?  But  while  it  is  true  that  in  the  physical  world 
things  dominate  over  names,  and  are  not  at  the  mercy 
of  a  shifting  vocabulary,  yet  in  the  world  of  ideas, —  of 
history,  philosophy,  ethics  and  poetry, —  words  triumph 
over  things,  are  even  equivalent  to  things,  and  are  as 
truly  the  living  organism  of  thought  as  the  eyes,  lips, 
and  entire  physiognomy  of  a  man,  are  the  media  of  the 
soul's  expression.  Hence  words  are  the  only  certain  test 
of  thought;  so  much  so  that  we  often  stop  in  the  midst 
of  an  assertion,  an  exclamation,  or  a  request,  startled  by 
the  form  it  assumes  in  words.  Thus,  in  Shakespeare, 
King  John  says  to  Hubert,  who  pleaded  his  sovereign's 
order  for  putting  the  young  prince  to  death,  that  if, 
instead  of  receiving  the  order  in  signs, 

"Thou 
Il.iflst  bid  mo  tell  my  talc  in  express  I'-ords, 
Deep  shame  had  struck  mc  dumb." 

Words  are  often  not  only  the  vehicle  of  thought,  but  the 
very  mirror  in  which  we  see  our  ideas,  and  behold  the 
beauty  or  ugliness  of  our  inner  selves. 


THE    MORALITY    IN    WORDS.  83 

A  volume   might  be  written  on  the   mutual   influence 
of  language  and  opinion,  sliowing  that  as 

"  Faults  in  the  life  breed  errors  in  the  brain, 
And  tliese  reciprocally  tho!<e  again," 

SO  the  sentiments  we  cherish  mould  our  language,  and 
our  words  react  upon  our  opinions  and  feelings.  Let  a 
man  go  into  a  foreign  country,  give  up  his  own  language, 
and  adopt  another,  and  he  will  gradually  and  uncon- 
sciously change  his  opinions,  too.  He  will  neither  be 
able  to  express  his  old  ideas  adequately  in  the  new  words, 
nor  to  prevent  the  new  words  of  themselves  putting  new 
ideas  in  his  brain.  Who  has  failed  tb  notice  that  the 
opinion  we  entertain  of  an  object  does  not  more  power- 
fully influence  the  mind  in  applying  to  it  a  name  or  an 
epithet,  than  the  epithet  or  name  influences  the  opinion? 
Call  thunder  "the  bolt  of  God's  wrath,"  and  you  awaken 
a  feeling  of  terror;  call  it,  with  the  German  peasant,  chis 
Jit'he  (jeicitter,  "the  dear  thunder,"  and  you  excite  a  differ- 
ent emotion.  As  the  forms  in  which  we  clothe  the  out- 
ward expression  of  our  feelings  react  with  mighty  force 
upon  the  heart,  so  our  speculative  opinions  are  greatly 
confirmed  or  invalidated  by  the  technical  terms  we  employ. 
Fiery  words,  it  has  been  ti'uly  said,  are  the  hot  blast 
that  inflames  the  fuel  of  our  passionate  nature;  and  formu- 
lated doctrine,  a  hedge  that  confines  the  discursive  wander- 
ings of  the  thoughts.  In  personal  quarrels,  it  is  the 
stimulus  men  give  themselves  by  stinging  words  that 
Impels  them  to  violent  deeds;  and  in  argumentative  dis- 
cussions it  is  the  positive  affirination  and  reaffirmation  of 
our  views  which,  more  than  the  reasons  we  give,  deepen 
our  convictions.  The  words  that  have  helped  us  to  con- 
quer the  truth  often  become  the  very  tyrants  of  our  con- 


84:  AVOKDS;    THEIR    USE    AXD    ADUSE. 

victioiis;  and  [)hrases  once  big  with  meaning  are  repeated 
till  they  "ossify  the  very  organs  of  intelligence."  False 
or  partial  definitions  often  lead  into  dangerous  errors; 
an  impassioned  polemic  falls  a  victim  to  his  own  logic, 
and  a  wily  advocate  becomes  the  dupe  of  his  own  rhetoric. 

Words,  in  short,  are  excellent  servants,  but  the  most 
tyrannical  of  masters.  Some  men  command  them,  but  a 
vast  majority  are  commanded  by  them.  There  are  words 
which  have  exercised  a  more  iron  rule,  swayed  with  a  more 
despotic  power,  than  Cffisar  or  the  Russian  Czar.  Often  an 
idle  word  has  conquered  a  host  of  facts;  and  a  mistaken 
theory,  embalmed  in  a  widely  received  word,  has  retarded 
for  centuries  the  progress  of  knowledge.  Thus  the  pro- 
tracted opposition  in  France  to  the  Newtonian  theory  arose 
chiefly  from  the  influence  of  the  word  "attraction";  the 
contemptuous  misnomer,  "  Gothic,"  applied  to  northern 
mediseval  architecture,  perpetuated  the  dislike  with  which 
it  was  regarded;  and  the  introduction  of  the  term  "landed 
proprietor"  into  Bengal  caused  a  disorganization  of  society 
which  had  never  been  caused  by  its  most  barbarous  in- 
vaders. 

Macaulay,  in  his  "  History  of  England,"  mentions  a  cir- 
cumstance strikingly  illustrative  of  the  connection  between 
language  and  opinion,  —  that  no  large  society  of  which  the 
language  is  not  Teutonic  has  ever  turned  Protestant,  and 
that  wherever  a  language  derived  from  ancient  Rome  is 
spoken,  the  religion  of  modern  Rome  to  this  day  prevails. 
"  Men  believe,"  says  Bacon,  "  that  their  reason  is  lord  over 
their  words,  but  it  happens,  too,  that  words  exercise  a 
reciprocal  and  reactionary  power  over  the  intellect.  .  . 
Words,  as  a  Tartar's  bow,  do  shoot  back  upon  the  under- 
standing of  the  wisest,  and  mightily  entangle  and  pervert 


THE    MORALITY    IX    WORDS.  85 

the  judgment."  Not  only  every  language,  but  every  age, 
has  its  charmed  words,  its  necromantic  terms,  which  give 
to  the  cunning  speaker  who  knows  how  to  ring  the  changes 
upon  them,  instant  access  to  the  hearts  of  men,  as  at  "Open 
Sesame!"  the  doors  of  the  cave  flung  themselves  open  to 
the  thieves,  in  the  Arabian  tale.  "  There  are  words,"  says 
Balzac,  "  which,  like  the  trumpets,  cymbals  and  bass  drums 
of  mountebanks,  attract  the  public;  the  words  'beauty,' 
'  glory,'  '  poetry,'  have  wit(;heries  that  seduce  the  grossest 
minds."  At  the  utterance  of  the  magic  names  of  Auster- 
litz  and  Marengo,  thousands  have  rushed  to  a  forlorn  hope, 
and  met  death  at  the  cannon's  mouth. 

Wiien  Haydon's  picture  of  Christ's  Entry  into  Jerusa- 
lem was  exhibited  in  London  in  1820,  Mrs.  Siddons,  the 
famous  actress,  entering  the  exhibition  room,  said:  "The 
paleness  of  your  Christ  gives  it  a  supernatural  look."  This, 
says  the  painter,  settled  its  success.  There  is  great  value 
in  the  selection  of  terms;  many  a  man's  foi-tune  has  been 
made  by  a  happy  phrase.  Thousands  thronged  to  see  the 
great  work  with  "  a  supernatural  look." 

South,  in  his  eloquent  sermons  on  "  The  Fatal  Impos- 
ture and  Force  of  Words,"  observes  that  any  one  who 
wishes  to  manage  "  the  rabble,"  need  never  inquire,  so 
long  as  they  have  ears  to  hear,  whether  they  have  any 
understanding  whereby  to  judge.  With  two  or  three 
popular,  empty  words,  well  tuned  and  humored,  he  may 
whistle  them  backward  and  forward,  upward  and  down- 
ward, till  he  is  weary;  and  get  upon  their  backs  when  he 
is  so.  When  Casar's  army  mutinied,  no  argument  from 
interest  or  reason  could  persuade  them;  but  upon  his 
addressing  them  as  Qitirifes,  the  tumult  was  instantly 
hushed,  and  they  took   that  word   in  payment  of  all.     "  In 


8G  WORDS;    THEIR    USK    AND    ABUSE. 

the  thirtieth  chapter  of  Isaiah  we  find  some  arrived  at  that 
pitch  of  sottishness,  and  so  much  in  love  with  their  own 
ruin,  as  to  own  plainly,  and  roundly  say,  what  they  would 
be  at.  In  the  tenth  verse,  '  Prophesy  not  unto  us,'  say 
they,  '  right  things,  but  prophesy  to  us  smooth  things.'  As 
if  they  had  said,  '  Do  but  oil  the  razor  for  us,  and  let  us 
alone  to  cut  our  own  throats.'  Such  an  enchantment  is 
there  in  words;  and  so  fine  a  thing  does  it  seem  to  some 
to  be  ruined  plausibly,  and  to  be  ushered  to  destruction 
with  panegyric  and  acclamation;  a  shameful,  though  irre- 
fragable argument  of  the  absurd  empire  and  usurpation  of 
words  over  things;  and  that  the  greatest  affairs  and  most 
important  interests  of  the  world  are  carried  on  by  things, 
not  as  they  are,  but  as  they  are  called.'' 

The  Romans,  after  the  expulsion  of  Tarquin,  could  not 
brook  the  idea  of  being  governed  by  a  king;  yet  they 
submitted  to  the  most  abject  slavery  under  an  emperor. 
Cromwell  was  too  sagacious  to  disgust  the  republicans  by 
calling  himself  King,  though  he  doubtless  laughed  grimly 
in  his  sleeve  as,  under  the  title  of  Lord  Protector,  he 
exercised  all  the  regal  functions.  We  are  told  by  Saint 
Simon  that  at  the  court  of  the  grand  monarch,  Louis  XIV, 
gambling  was  so  common  that  even  the  ladies  took  part 
in  it.  The  gentlemen  did  not  scruple  to  cheat  at  cards; 
but  the  ladies  had  a  peculiar  tenderness  on  the  subject. 
No  lady  could  for  a  moment  think  of  retaining  such 
unrighteous  gains;  the  moment  they  were  touched,  they 
were  religiously  given  away.  But  then,  we  must  add,  the 
gift  was  always  made  to  some  other  winner  of  her  own  sex. 
By  carefully  avoiding  the  words  "interchange  of  winnings," 
the  charming  casuists  avoided  all  self-reproach,  and  all 
sharp   censure   by    their   discreet   and    lenient   confessoi*s. 


THE    MORALITY    IN    WORDS.  .87 

There  are  sects  of  Christians  at  tne  present  day  that  protest 
vehemently  against  a  hired  ministry;  vet  their  preachers 
must  be  warmed,  fed  and  clotlied  Ijy  "donation  parties"; 
reminding  one  of  the  snob  gentleman  in  Moliere,  whose 
father  was  no  shop-keeper,  but  kindly  "  chose  goods  "  for  bis 
friends,  which  he  let  them  have  for  —  mone}'. 

Party  and  sectarian  leaders  know  that  the  great  secret 
of  the  art  of  swaying  the  people  is  to  invent  a  good  shib- 
boleth or  battle  cry,  to  be  dinned  continually  in  their 
ears.  Persons  familiar  with  British  history  will  remember 
certain  talisman ic  vocables,  such  as  "  Wilkes  and  Liberty," 
the  bare  utterance  of  which  has  been  sufficient  at  times 
to  set  a  whole  population  in  a  flame;  while  the  solemn 
and  sepulchral  cadences  in  which  Pitt  repeated  the  cuckoo 
song  of  "  thrones  and  altars,"  "  anarchy  and  dissolution 
of  so:ial  order,"  were  more  potent  arguments  against 
revolution  than  the  most  perfect  syllogism  that  was  ever 
constructed  in  mood  and  figui-e.  So  in  our  own  country 
this  verbal  magic  has  been  found  more  convincing  than 
arguments  in  "Barbara"  or  "  Baralipton."  Patriots  and 
demagogues  alike  have  found  that  it  was  only  necessary, 
in  South's  phrase,  to  take  any  passion  of  the  people,  when 
it  was  predominant  and  just  at  the  critical  height  of  it, 
"and  nick  it  with  some  lucky  or  unlucky  woixl,"  and  they 
might  "as  certainly  overrule  it  to  their  own  purpose  as 
a  spark  of  fire,  falling  upon  gunpowder,  will  infallibly 
blow  it  up."  "  Free  Trade  and  Sailors'  Rights,"  "  No 
More  Compromise,"  "The  Higher  Law,"  "The  h-repress- 
ible  Conflict,"  "Squatter  Sovereignty,"  and  other  similar 
phrases,  have  roused  and  moved  the  public  mind  as  much 
as  the  pulpit  and  the  press. 

Gouverneur  Morris,    in    his  Parisian  journal   of   1789, 


88  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

tells  an  anecdote  which  strikingly  illustrates  this  influence 
oi'  catch -words  upon  the  popular  mind.  A  gentleman,  in 
walking,  came  near  to  a  knot  of  people  whom  a  street 
orator  was  haranguing  on  the  power  of  a  qualified  veto 
(veto  suspoisif),  which  the  constituent  assembly  had  just 
granted  to  the  king.  "  Messieurs,"  said  the  orator,  "  we  ' 
have  not  a  supply  of  bread.  Let  me  tell  you  the  reason. 
It  has  been  but  three  days  since  the  king  obtained  this 
qualified  veto,  and  during  that  time  the  aristocrats  have 
bought  up  some  of  these  suspensions,  and  carried  the  grain 
out  of  the  kingdom."  '  To  this  profound  discourse  the 
people  assented  by  loud  cheers.  Not  only  shibboleths, 
but  epithets,  are  often  more  convincing  than  syllogisms. 
The  term  Utopian  or  Quixotic,  associated  in  the  minds  of 
the  people  with  any  measui-e,  even  the  wisest  and  most 
practicable,  is  as  fatal  to  it  as  what  some  one  calls  the 
poisonous  sting  of  the  American  (?)  humbug. 

So  in  theology;  false  doctrines  and  true  doctrines  have 
owed  their  currency  or  non-currency,  in  a  great  measure, 
to  the  coinage  of  happy  terms,  by  which  they  have  been 
summed  up  and  made  attractive  or  oifensive.  Ti-ench 
observes  that  "  the  entire  secret  of  Buddhism  is  in  the 
'  Nirvana.'  Take  away  the  word,  and  it  is  not  too  much  to 
say  that  the  keystone  to  the  whole  arch  is  gone."  When 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church  coined  the  term  "  transubstan- 
tiation,"  the  error  which  had  so  long  been  held  in  solution 
was  precipitated,  and  became  henceforth  a  fixed  and  influ- 
ential dogma.  What  a  potent  watchword  was  the  term 
"Reformation,"  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries! 
Who  can  estimate  the  influence  of  the  phrases  "  Broad 
Church,"  "Liberal  Church,"  "Close  Communion,"  in  ad- 
vancing or  retarding  the  growth  of  certain  religious  sects 


THE    MORALITY    TX    WORDS.  HH 

at  this  day?  Many  of  even  the  most  "advanced  thiiilc- 
ers,"  who  reject  the  supernatural  element  of  the  Bible, 
put  all  religions  upon  the  same  level,  and  deem  Shake- 
speare as  truly  inspired  as  the  Apostles,  style  themselves 
"  Christians." 

Even  in  science  happy  names  have  had  much  to  do  with 
the  general  reception  of  truth.  "  Hardly  any  original 
thoughts  on  mental  or  social  subjects,"  says  a  writer, 
"ever  make  their  way  among  mankind,  or  assume  their 
proper  proportions  even  in  the  minds  of  their  inventors, 
until  aptly  selected  words  or  phrases  have,  as  it  were, 
nailed  them  down  and  held  them  fast."  How  much  is 
the  study  of  the  beautiful  science  of  botany  hindered  b\'' 
such  "lexical  superfetations "  as  chnjsantlwDiHin  leitkau- 
themum,  Mijosotis  scotyioeides, — "  scorpion-shaped  mouse's 
ear";  and  how  much  is  that  of  astronomy  promoted 
by  such  popular  terms  as  "the  bear,"  "the  serpent," 
"the  milky  way"!  How  much  knowledge  is  gath- 
ered up  in  the  compact  and  easily  remembered  phra-e, 
"correlation  of  forces";  and  to  what  an  extent  the  wide 
diffusion  of  Darwin's  speculations  is  owing  to  two  or 
three  felicitous  and  comprehensive  terms,  such  as  "the 
struggle  for  existence,"  "  survival  of  the  fittest,"  "  the  pro- 
cess of  natural  selection"!  Who  that  has  felt  the  pain- 
fulness  of  doubt  has  not  desired  to  know  something  of 
"the  positive  philosophy"  of  Com^e?  On  the  other  hand, 
the  well-known  anatomist,  Professor  Owen,  complains 
witli  just  reason  of  the  embarrassments  produced  in  his 
science  by  having  to  use  a  long  description  instead  of  a 
name.  Thus  a  particular  bone  is  called  by  Soemmering 
'^'pars   occipitalis   stride   sic    dicta    partis   occipitidis   ossis 


90  WORDS;   THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

spJiciio-orcipitaUs,^''  a  description  so  clumsy  that  only  the 
diiust  necessity  would  lead  one  to  use  it. 

Even  great  authors,  who  are  supposed  to  have  "  sov- 
ereign sway  and  niasterdom"  over  words,  are  often  be- 
witched and  led  captive  by  them.  Thus  Southey,  Cole- 
ridge and  Wordsworth  were  bent  on  establishing  their 
Pantisocracy  on  the  banks  of  the  Susquehanna,  not  be- 
cause they  knew  anything  of  that  locality,  but  because 
Susquehanna  was  "  such  a  prettij  name.'^  Again,  to  point 
an  epigram  or  give  edge  to  a  sarcasm,  a  writer  will  stab 
a  rising  reputation  as  with  a  poniard;  and,  even  when 
convicted  of  misrepresentation,  will  sooner  stick  to  the 
lie  than  part  with  a  jeii  iVesprit^  or  forego  a  verbal  felic- 
ity. Thus  Byron,  alluding  to  Keats's  death,  which  was 
supposed  to  have  been. caused  by  Gifford's  savage  criticism 
in  the  "Quarterly,"  said: 

"Strange  that  the  soul,  that  very  fiery  particle, 
Should  let  itself  be  snuffed  out  by  au  article;" 

Though  he  was  afterward  informed  of  the  untruth  of 
these  lines,  Byron,  plethoric  as  he  was  with  poetic  wealth 
and  wit,  could  not  willingly  let  them  die;  and  so  the  witti- 
cism yet  remains  to  mislead  and  provoke  the  laughter  of 
his  readers. 

Again,  there  are  authors  who,  to  meet  the  necessities 
of  rhyme,  or  to  give  music  to  a  period,  will  pad  out  their 
sentences  with  meaningless  expletives.  They  employ 
words  as  carpenters  put  false  windows  into  houses;  not  to 
let  in  light  upon  their  meaning,  but  for  symmetry.  Or, 
perhaps,  they  imagine  that  a  certain  degree  of  distension 
of  the  intellectual  stomach  is  required  to  enable  it  to  act 
with  its  full  powers, — just  as  some  of  the  Russian  peas- 
antry mix  sawdust  with    the    train  oil   they  drink,  or   as 


•  THE    MORALITY    IN    WORDS.  91 

hay  and  straw,  as  well  as  corn,  are  given  to  horses,  to 
supply  the  necessary  bulk.  Thus  hi-.  Johnson,  imitating 
Juvenal,  says: 

"Let  observation,  with  extensive  view, 
Survey  mankind  from  China  to  Peru." 

This,  a  lynx-eyed  critic  contended,  was  equivalent  to  say- 
ing: "  Let  observation,  wiih  extensive  observation,  observe 
mankind  extensiveh'."  If  the  Spartans,  as  we  are  told, 
fined  a  citizen  because  he  used  tiiree  words  where  two 
would  have  done  as  well,  how  would  they  have  punished 
such  prodigality  of  language? 

It  is  an  impressive  truth  which  has  often  been  noticed 
by  moralists,  that  indulgence  in  verbal  vice  speedily  leads 
to  corresponding  vices  in  conduct.  If  a  man  talk  of  any 
mean,  sensual,  or  criminal  practice  in  a  familiar  or  flip- 
pant tone,  the  delicacy  of  his  moral  sense  is  almost  sure 
to  be  lessened,  he  loses  his  horror  of  the  vice,  and,  when 
tempted  to  do  the  deed,  he  is  far  more  likely  to  yield. 
Many  a  man,  without  dreaming  of  such  a  result,  has  thus 
talked  himself  into  vice,  into  sensuality,  and  even  into 
ruin.  The  apostle  James  was  so  impressed  with  the 
significance  of  speech  that  he  regarded  it  as  an  unerr- 
ing sign  of  character.  "  If  any  man  offend  not  in  word," 
he  declares,  "  the  same  is  a  perfect  man,  and  able  also  to 
bridle  the  whole  body."  Again  he  declares  that  "  the 
tongue  is  an  unruly  evil,  full  of  deadly  poison";  com- 
menting upon  which.  Rev.  F.  W.  Robertson  observes: 
"  The  deadliest  poisons  are  those  for  which  no  test  is 
known;  there  are  poisons  so  destructive  that  a  single  drop 
insinuated  into  the  veins  produces  death  in  three  seconds. 
.  .  .  Ill  that  drop  of  venom  which  distils  from  the  sting 
of   the   smallest   insect,   or    the    spikes    of   the    nettle-leaf, 


02  WOKDS;   THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE, 

there  is  concentrated  the  quintessence  of  a  poison  so 
subtle  that  the  microscope  cannot  distinguish  it,  and  yet 
so  virulent  that  it  can  inflame  the  blood,  irritate  the  whole 
constitution,  and  convert  night  and  day  into  restless 
misery."  So,  he  adds,  there  are  words  of  calumny  and 
slander,  apparently  insignificant,  yet  so  venomous  and 
deadly  that  they  not  only  inflame  hearts  and  fever  liuman 
existence,  but  poison  human  society  at  the  very  fountain 
springs  of  life.  It  was  said  with  the  deepest  feeling  of 
the  utterers  of  such  words,  by  one  who  had  smarted 
under  their  sting:  "Adders'  poison  is  under  their  lips." 

Who  can  estimate  the  amount  of  misery  which  has 
been  produced  in  society  by  merely  idle  words,  uttered 
without  malice,  and  by  words  uttered  in  jest?  A  poet, 
whose  name  is  unknown  to  us,  has  vividly  painted  the 
effects  of  such  utterances: 

"  A  frivolous  word,  a  sharp  retort, 

A  flash  from  a  passing  cloud, 
Two  hearts  are  scathed  to  their  inmost  core, 
Are  ashes  and  dust  f orevermore ; 

Two  faces  turn  to  the  crowd, 

/Masked  by  pride  with  a  lifelong  lie, 
To  hide  the  scars  of  that  agony. 
"A  frivolous  word,  a  sharp  retort, 
/  An  arrow  at  random  sped; 

It  has  cut  in  twain  the  mystic  tie 
That  had  bound  two  souls  in  harmony. 

Sweet  love  lies  bleeding  or  dead. 
A  poisoned  shaft,  with  scarce  an  aim, 
Has  done  a  mischief  sad  as  shame." 

How  often  have  thoughtless  words  set  empires  ablaze, 
and  kindled  furious  wai'S  among  nations!  It  was  one  of 
the  virtues  of  George  Washington  that  he  knew  how  to 
be  silent.  John  Adams  said  he  had  the  most  remarkable 
mouth  he  had  ever  seen;  for  he  had  the  art  of  control- 
ling his  lips.     One  of  the  rules  of  conduct  to  which  David 


THE   MOhALITY   lis"   WORDS.  93 

Hume  inflexibly  adhered,  was  never  to  reply  to  any  attack 
made  upon  him  or  his  writings.  It  was  creditable  to  him 
that  he  had  no  anxiety  to  have  "the  last  word," — that 
which  in  family  circles  has  been  pronounced  to  be  "the 
most  dangei'ous  of  infernal  machines." 

It  is  not,  however,  in  the  realm  of  literature  and  morals 
only  that  the  power  of  words  is  seen.  Who  is  ignorant  of 
their  sway  in  the  world  of  politics?  Is  not  fluency  of 
speech,  in  many  communities,  more  than  statesmanship? 
Are  not  brains,  with  a  little  tongue,  often  far  less  potent 
than  "  tongue  with  a  garnish  of  brains"?  Need  any  one 
be  told  tliat  a  talent  for  speech- making  has  stood  in  place 
of  all  other  acquirements;  that  it  is  this  which  has  made 
judges  without  law,  and  diplomatists  without  French; 
which  has  sent  to  the  army  brigadiers  who  knew  not  a 
cannon  fi-om  a  mortar,  and  to  the  legislature  men  who 
could  not  tell  a  bank  note  from  a  bill  of  exchange;  which, 
according  to  Macaulay,  made  a  Foreign  Minister  of  Mr.  Pitt, 
who  never  opened  Vattel,  and  which  was  near  making  a 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  of  Mr.  Sheridan,  who  could  not 
work  a  sum  in  long  division?  "To  be  a  man  of  the  world," 
says  Corporal  Bunting,  a  character  in  one  of  Bulwer's 
novels,  "you  must  know  all  the  ins  and  outs  of  speech- 
ifying. It's  words  that  make  another  man's  mare  go  your 
road.  Augh!  that  must  have  been  a  clever  man  as  invented 
language.  It  is  a  marvel  to  think  how  much  a  man  does 
in  the  way  of  cheating,  if  he  only  has  the  gift  of  the  gal); 
wants  a  missus, —  talks  her  over;  wants  your  horse, —  talks 
you  out  of  it;  wants  a  place, —  talks  himself  into  it.  .  . 
Words  make  even  tliem  'ere  authors,  poor  creatures,  in 
every  man's  mouth.  Augh!  sir,  take  note  of  the  ivords, 
and  the  things  will  take  care  of  themselves." 


94  words;   theik  use  and  auuse. 

It  is  true  that  "lyinjf  words"  are  not  always  responsible 
for  the  mischief  they  do;  that  they  often  rebel  and  growl 
audibly  against  the  service  into  which  they  are  pressed,  and 
testify  against  their  taskmasters.  The  latent  nature  of  a 
man  struggles  often  through  his  own  words,  so  that  even 
truth  itself  comes  blasted  from  his  lips,  and  vulgarity, 
malignity,  and  littleness  of  soul,  however  anxiously  cloaked, 
are  betrayed  by  the  very  phrases  and  images  of  their 
op[)osites.  "A  Satanic  drop  in  the  blood,"  it  has  been  said, 
"  makes  a  clergyman  preach  diabolism  from  scriptural 
texts,  and  a  philanthropist  thunder  hate  from  the  rostrum 
of  reform."  *  But  though  the  truth  often  leaks  out 
through  the  most  hypocritical  words,  it  is  yet  true  that 
they  are  successfully  employed,  as  decoy  ducks,  to  deceive, 
and  the  dupes  who  are  cheated  by  them  are  legion.  There 
are  men  fond  of  abstractions,  whom  words  seem  to  enter 
and  take  possession  of,  as  their  lords  and  owners.  Blind 
to  every  shape  but  a  shadow,  deaf  to  every  sound  but  an 
echo,  they  invert  the  legitimate  order,  and  regard  things 
as  the  symbols  of  words,  not  words  as  the  symbols  of 
things.  There  is,  in  short,  "  a  besotting  intoxication  which 
this  verbal  magic,  if  I  may  so  call  it,  brings  upon  the  mind 
of  man.  ,  .  Words  are  able  to  persuade  men  out  of  what 
they  find  and  feel,  to  reverse  the  ver}'  impressions  of  sense, 
and  to  amuse  men  with  fancies  and  paradoxes,  even  in 
spite  of  nature  and  experience."  t 

All  who  are  familiar  with  Dickens  will  recollect  the 
reply  of  the  shrewd  Samuel  Weller,  when  asked  the  mean- 
ing of  the  woi'd  monomania:  "When  a  poor  fellow  takes 
a  piece  of  goods  from  a  shop,  it  is  called  theft;  but  if  a 

♦"Literature  and  Life,"  by  Edwin  P.  Whipple. 
tSouth'a  Sermous. 


THE    MOUALITY    IN    WORDS.  95 

wealthy  lady  does  the  same  thing,  it  is  called  mouomrmiay 
There  is  biting  satire  as  well  as  naivete  and  dry  humor 
in  the  reply,  and  it  strikingly  shows  the  moral  power  of 
language;  how  the  same  act  may  be  made  to  appear  in 
wholly  different  lights,  according  to  the  phraseology  used  lo 
describe  it.  The  same  character  may  be  made  to  look  as 
spotless  as  an  angel,  or  as  black  as  "the  sooty  spirits  that 
troop  under  Acheron's  flag,"  through  the  lubricity  of  lan- 
guage. "'Timl'lKS,''  says  Seneca,  "si?  cant  ton  vocat;  sordidns 
parcutii.''''  Thousands  who  would  shrink  back  with  disgust 
or  horror  from  a  vice  which  has  an  ugly  name,  are  led 
"first  to  endure,  then  pity,  then  embi'ace,"  when  men  have 
thrown  over  it  the  mantle  of  an  honorable  appellation. 
A  singular  but  most  instructive  dictionary  might  be  com- 
piled by  taking  one  after  another  the  honorable  and  the 
sacred  words  of  a  language,  and  showing  for  what  infamies, 
basenesses,  crimes,  or  follies,  each  has  been  made  a  pretext. 
Is  there  no  meaning  in  the  fact  that,  among  the  ancient 
Romans,  the  same  word  was  employed  to  designate  a  crime 
and  a  great  action,  and  that  a  softened  expression  for  "a 
thief"  was  "a  man  of  three  letters"  (f.  u.  r.)?  Does  it 
make  no  difference  in  our  estimate  of  the  gambler  and  his 
profession,  whether  we  call  him  by  the  plain,  unvarnished 
Saxon  "  blackleg,"  or  by  the  French  epithet,  "  industrious 
chevalier"?  Can  any  one  doubt  that  in  Ital}',  when  poison- 
ing was  rifest,  the  crime  was  fearfully  increased  by  the  fact 
that,  in  place  of  this  term,  not  to  be  breathed  in  ears 
polite,  the  death  of  some  one  was  said  to  be  "assisted"? 
Or  can  any  one  doubt  the  moral  effect  of  a  similar  perver- 
sion of  words  in  France,  when  a  subtle  poison,  bv  which 
impatient   heirs   delivei'ed   themselves   from    persons   who 


^G  words;    TIIKIR    use    a  XI)    AUrSE. 

stool  between  thein  and  the  inheritance  they  coveted,  wa? 
called  "succession  powder"? 

Juvenal  indi;^nianily  deuijunces  the  polished  Romans  for 
relieving  the  consciences  of  rich  criminals  by  softening  the 
names  of  theij"  ci"imes;  and  Thucydides,  in  a  well  known 
passage  of  his  history,  tells  how  the  morals  of  the  Greeks 
of  his  day  were  sapped,  and  how  they  concealed  the 
national  deterioration,  by  perversions  of  the  customary 
meanings  of  words.  Unreasoning  rashness,  he  says,  passed 
as  "manliness"  and  eaprit  de  corps,  and  prudent  caution 
for  specious  cowardice;  sobermindedness  was  a  mere  "cloak 
for  effeminacy,"  and  general  prudence  was  "inefficient 
inertness."  The  Athenians,  at  one  time,  were  adepts  in 
the  art  of  coining  agreeable  names  for  disagreeable  things. 
"Taxes"  they  called  "subscriptions,"  or  "  contributions  "; 
the  prison  was  "the  house";  the  executioner  a  "public 
servant";  and  a  general  abolition  of  debt  was  "a  dis- 
burdening ordinance."  Devices  like  these  are  common  to 
all  countries;  and  in  our  own,  especially,  one  is  startled 
to  see  what  an  amount  of  ingenuity  has  been  expended 
in  perfecting  this  "devil's  vocabulary,"  and  how  successful 
the  press  has  been  in  its  efforts  to  transmute  acts  of 
wickedness  into  mere  peccadilloes,  and  to  empty  words 
employed  in  the  condemnation  of  evil,  of  the  depth  and 
earnestness  of  the  moral  reprobation  they  convey. 

The  use  of  classical  names  for  vices  has  done  no  little 
harm  to  the  public  morals.  We  may  say  of  these  names, 
what  Burke  said  with  doubtful  correctness  of  vices  them- 
selves, that  '■■  they  lose  half  their  deformity  by  losing  all 
their  grossness."  If  any  person  is  in  doubt  about  the  moral 
quality  of  an  act,  let  him  characterize  it  in  plain  Saxon, 
and  he  will  see  it  in   its  true  colors. 


THE    MORALITY    IN    WORDS.  97 

Some  time  ago  a  Wisconsin  clergyman,  being  detected 
in  stealing  books  from  a  bookstore,  confessed  the  truth, 
and  added  that  he  left  his  former  home  in  New  Jersey 
under  disgrace  for  a  similar  theft.  This  fact  a  New  York 
paper  noted  under  the  head  of  "A  Peculiar  Misfortune." 
About  the  same  time  a  clerk  in  Richmond,  Va.,  being  sent 
to  deposit  several  hundreds  of  dollars  in  a  bank,  ran 
away  with  the  money  to  the  North.  Having  been  pursued, 
overtaken,  and  compelled  to  return  the  mone}',  he  was 
spoken  of  by  "the  chivalry"  as  the  young  man  "  who  had 
lately  inH  icifh  cm  (iccidoit.''  Is  it  not  an  alarming  sign 
of  the  times,  when,  in  the  legislature  of  one  of  our  largest 
eastern  States,  a  member  declares  that  he  has  been  asked 
by  another  member  for  his  vote,  and  told  that  he  would 
get  "five  hundred  reasons  for  giving  it";  thus  making 
the  highest  word  in  our  language,  that  which  signifies 
divinely  given  power  of  discrimination  and  choice,  the 
synonym  of  bribery? 

Perhaps  no  honorable  term  in  the  language  has  been 
more  debased  than  '^gentleman."  Originally  the  word 
meant  a  man  born  of  a  noble  famil\',  or  gf'ns,  as  the 
Romans  called  it;  but  as  such  persons  were  usually 
possessed  of  wealth  and  leisure,  they  were  genei'ally  dis- 
tinguished by  greater  refinement  of  manners  than  the 
working  classes,  and  a  more  tasteful  dress.  As  in  the 
course  of  ages  their  riches  and  legal  privileges  diminished, 
and  the  gulf  which  separated  them  from  the  citizens  of  the 
tniding  towns  was  bridged  by  the  increasing  wealth  and 
power  of  the  latter,  the  term  "  gentleman  "  came  at  last  to 
denote  indiscriminately  all  persons  who  kept  up  the  state 
and  observed  the  social  forms  which  had  once  characterized 
men  of  rank.  To-day  the  term  has  sunk  so  low  that  the 
7 


98  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

acutest  lexicographer  would  be  puzzled  to  tell  its  moanin;^. 
Not  only  does  every  person  of  decent  exterior  and  deport- 
ment assume  to  be  a  gentleman,  but  the  term  is  applied 
to  the  vilest  criminals  and  the  most  contemptible  mis- 
creants, as  well  as  to  the  poorest  and  most  illiterate 
persons  in  the  community. 

In  aristocratic  England  the  artificial  distinctions  of 
society  have  so  far  disappeared  that  even  the  porter  who 
lounges  in  his  big  chair,  and  condescends  to  show  you 
out,  is  the  "gentleman  in  the  hall";  Jeames  is  the  "gen- 
tleman in  uniform";  while  the  valet  is  the  "gentleman's 
gentleman."  Even  a  half  a  century  ago,  George  IV,  who 
was  so  ignorant  that  he  could  hardly  spell,  and  who  in 
heart  and  soul  was  a  thorough  snob,  was  pronounced,  upon 
the  ground  of  his  grand  and  suave  manners,  "  the  first 
gentleman  of  Europe."  But  in  the  United  States  the  term 
has  been  so  emptied  of  its  original  meaning, — especially 
in  some  of  the  southern  states,  where  societ\^  has  hardly 
emerged  from  a  feudal  state,  and  where  men  who  shoot 
each  other  in  a  street  fray  still  babble  of  being  "  born 
gentlemen,"  and  of  "dying  like  gentlemen," — that  most 
persons  will  think  it  is  quite  time  for  the  abolition  of  that 
heartless  conventionality,  that  pretentious  cheat  and  bar- 
barian, the  gentleman.  Cowper  declared,  a  hundred  years 
ago,  in  regard  to  duelling: 

"  A  srentleman 
Will  not  insult  nie,  and  no  other  can." 

A  southern  newspaper  stated  some  years  ago  that  a  "gen- 
tleman "  was  praising  the  town  of  Woodville,  Mississippi, 
and  remarked  that  "  it  was  the  most  quiet,  peaceable  place 
he  ever  saw;  there  was  no  quari'elling  or  rowdyism,  no 
fighting   about   the   streets.     If  a  gentleman   insulted   an- 


THE    MORALITY    IN    WORDS.  90 

other,  he  was  quietly  tihot  doicii,  and  there  was  the  last  of 
it."  The  gentle  Isaiali  liynders,  who  acted  as  marshal  at 
the  time  the  pirate  Hicks  was  executed  in  New  York, 
had  doubtless  similar  notions  of  gentility;  for,  after  con- 
versing a  moment  with  the  culprit,  he  said  to  the  by- 
standers: "I  asked  the  (jentleman  if  he  desired  to  address 
the  audience,  but  he  declined."  In  a  similar  s[nrit  Booth, 
the  assassin  of  Lincoln,  when  he  was  surrounded  in  the 
barn,  where  he  was  shot  like  a  beast,  offered  to  pledge  his 
word  "  as  a  gentleman,''''  to  come  out  and  try  to  shoot  one 
or  two  of  his  captors.  When  the  Duke  of  Saxe- Weimar 
visited  the  United  States  about  fifty  years  ago,  he  was 
asked  by  a  hackman:  "Are  you  the  man  that's  going  to 
ride  with  me;   for  I  am  the  (/entleinan  that's  to  drive?" 

When  a  young  man  becomes  a  reckless  spendthrift, 
how  easy  it  is  to  gloss  over  his  folly  by  talking  of  his 
"  generosit\',"  his  "  big-heartedness,"  and  "contempt  for 
trifles";  or,  if  he  runs  into  the  opposite  vice  of  miserly 
meanness,  how  convenient  to  dignify  it  by  the  terms 
"  economy  "  and  "wise  forecast  of  the  future"!  Many  a 
man  has  blown  out  anotiier's  brains  in  "  an  aftair  of 
honor,"  who,  if  accused  of  murder,  would  have  started 
back  with  horror.  Many  a  person  stakes  his  all  on  a 
public  stock,  or  sells  wheat  or  corn  which  he  does  not 
poss(!ss,  in  the  expectation  of  a  speedy  fall,  who  would  be 
thunderstruck  if  told  tliat,  while  considering  himself  only 
a  shrewd  speculator,  he  is,  in  eveiything  save  decency 
of  appearance,  on  a  par  with  the  haunter  of  a  "hell," 
and  as  much  a  gambler  as  if  he  were  staking  his  money 
on  roHf/e-et-noir  or  roulette.  Hundreds  of  officials  have 
been  tempted  to  defraud  the  government  by  the  fact 
that    the    harshest    term    applied    to    the    olience     is    the 


100  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

rose-water  one,  "defaulting";  and  men  liavc  i)lotted  with- 
out compunction  the  downfall  of  the  government,  and 
plundered  its  treasury,  as  "  secessionists,"  who  would  have 
expected  to  dangle  at  the  rope's  end,  or  to  be  shot  down 
like  dogs,  had  they  regarded  themselves  as  rebels  or 
traitoi'S.  So  Pistol  objected  to  the  odious  word  "steal," — 
^^  convey  the  wise  it  call."  There  are  multitudes  of  persons 
who  can  sit  for  hours  at  a  festive  table,  gorging  them- 
selves, Gargantua-like,  "  with  links  and  chitterlings,"  and 
guzzling  whole  bottles  of  champagne,  under  the  impression 
that  they  are  "jolly  fellows,"  "true  epicureans,"  and  "con- 
noisseurs in  good  living,"  whose  cheeks  would  tingle  with 
indignation  and  shame  if  they  were  accused,  in  point- 
blank  terms,  of  vices  so  disgusting  as  intemperance  or 
gluttony.  "  I  am  not  a  slut,"  boasts  Audrey,  in  "As  You 
Like  It,"  "  though  I  thank  the  gods  I  am  foul." 

Of  all  classes  of  men  whose  callings  tempt  them  to 
juggle  with  words,  none  better  than  auctioneers  under- 
stand how  much  significance  lies  in  certain  shades  of 
expression.  It  is  told  of  Robins,  the  famous  London  auc- 
tioneer, who  in  selling  his  wares  revelled  in  an  oriental 
luxury  of  expression,  that  in  puffing  an  estate  he  described 
a  certain  ancient  gallows  as  a  "  hanging  wood."  At 
another  time,  having  made  the  beauties  of  the  earthlv 
paradise  which  he  was  commissioned  to  sell  too  gorgeously 
enchanting,  and  finding  it  necessary  to  blur  it  by  a  fault 
or  two,  lest  it  should  prove  "  too  good  for  human  nature's 
daily  food,"  the  Hafiz  of  the  mart  paused  a  moment,  and 
reluctantly  added:  "But  candor  compels  me  to  add,  gen- 
tlemen, that  there  are  two  drawbacks  to  this  splendid 
property, —  Uw  litter  of  the  rose  leaves  and  the  noise  of  the 
nightingales.'^ 


THE    MORALITY    IX    WORDS,  101 

It  is  liartlij  possible  to  estimate  the  mischief  wliiih  is 
done  to  society  by  the  debasement  of  its  hinguage  in  the 
various  ways  we  have  indicated.  When  the  only  words 
we  have  by  which  to  designate  the  personifications  of 
nobleness,  manliness,  courtesy  and  truth  are  systemat- 
ically applied  to  all  that  is  contemptible  and  vile,  who 
can  doubt  that  these  high  qualities  themselves  will  ulti- 
mately shai'e  in  the  debasement  to  which  their  proper 
names  are  subjected?  Who  does  not  see  how  vast  a  dif- 
ference it  must  make  in  our  estimate  of  any  species  of 
wickedness,  wliether  we  are  wont  to  designate  it,  and  to 
hear  it  designated,  by  some  word  which  brings  out  its 
hatefulness,  or  by  one  which  palliates  and  glosses  over  its 
foulness  and  deformity?  How  much  better  to  character- 
ize an  ugly  thing  by  an  ugly  word,  that  expresses  moral 
condemnation  and  disgust,  even  at  the  expense  of  some 
coarseness,  than  to  call » evil  good  and  good  evil,  to  put 
darkness  for  light,  and  light  for  darkness,  by  the  use  of 
a  term  that  throws  a  veil  of  sentiment  over  a  sin!  In 
reading  the  literature  of  former  days,  we  are  shocked 
occasionally  by  the  bluntness  and  plain  speaking  of  our 
fathers;  but  even  their  coarsest  terms, —  the  "naked 
words,  stript  from  their  shirts," — in  which  they  de- 
nounced libertinism,  were  far  less  hurtful  than  the  cere- 
monious delicac}'  which  has  taught  men  to  abuse  each 
other  with  the  utmost  politeness,  to  hide  the  loathsome- 
ness of  vice,  and  to  express  the  most  indecent  ideas  in 
the  most  modest  terms. 

It  has  been  justly  said  that  the  corrupter  of  a  language 
stabs  straight  at  the  very  heart  of  his  country.  He  com- 
mits a  crime  against  ever}''  individual  of  a  nation,  for  he 
poisons    a    stream    from    wliich    all    must   drink;    and  the 


102  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

poison  is  more  subtle  and  more  dangerous,  because  more 
likely  to  escape  detection,  than  the  deadliest  venom  with 
which  the  destructive  philosophy  of  our  day  is  assailing 
the  moral  or  the  religious  interests  of  humanity.  "Let 
the  words  of  a  country,"  says  Milton  in  a  letter  to  an 
Italian  scholar,  "  be  in  part  unhandsome  and  offensive  in 
themselves,  in  part  debased  by  wear  and  wrongly  uttered, 
and  what  do  they  declare  but,  by  no  light  indication,  that 
the  inhabitants  of  that  country  are  an  indolent,  idly 
yawning  race,  with  minds  already  long  prepared  for  any 
amount  of  servility?" 

Sometimes  the  spirit  which  governs  employers  or  em- 
ployed, and  other  classes  of  men,  in  their  mutual  relations, 
is  indicated  by  the  names  they  give  each  other.  Some 
years  ago  the  legislature  of  Massachusetts  made  a  law 
requiring  that  children  of  a  certain  age,  emplo3'ed  in  the 
factories  of  that  State,  should  be  sent  to  school  a  certain 
number  of  weeks  in  the  year.  While  visiting  the  facto- 
ries to  ascertain  whether  this  wise  provision  of  the  State 
government  was  complied  with,  an  officer  of  the  State 
inquired  of  the  agent  of  one  of  the  principal  factories  at 
New  Bedford,  whether  it  was  the  custom  to  do  anything 
for  the  physical,  intellectual,  or  moral  welfare  of  the 
work  people.  The  reply  would  not  have  been  inappropri- 
ate from  the  master  of  a  plantation,  or  the  captain  of  a 
coolie  ship:  "We  never  do;  as  for  myself,  I  regard  my 
work  people  as  I  regard  nnj  inacJihierj/.  .  .  They  must 
look  out  for  themselves,  as  I  do  for  inyself.  When  my 
machinery  gets  old  and  useless,  I  reject  it  and  get  new: 
and  these  people  are  a  part  of  my  machinery."  Another 
agent  in  another  part  of  the  State  replied  to  a  similar 
question,  that  "  he  used  his  mill  hands  as  he  used  his  horse; 


THE    MORALITY    IX    WORDS.  103 

;is  loji;^'  as  the  horse  was  in  good  condition  and  renderrtl 
good  service,  he  treated  him  well;  otherwise  he  got  rid  ot 
him  as  soon  as  he  could,  and  what  became  of  him  after- 
ward was  no  affair  of  his." 

But  we  need  not  multiply  illustrations  to  show  the 
moral  power  of  words.  As  the  eloquent  James  Martineau 
says:  "Power  they  certainly  have.  They  are  alive  with 
sweetness,  with  terror,  with  pity.  They  have  eyes  to  look 
at  you  with  strangeness  or  with  response.  They  are  even 
creative,  and  can  wrap  a  world  in  darkness  for  us,  or  flood 
it  with  light.  But  in  all  this,  they  are  not  signs  of  the 
weakness  of  humanity:  they  are  the  very  crown  and  blos- 
som of  its  supreme  strength;  and  the  poet  whom  this  faith 
possesses  will,  to  the  end  of  time,  be  master  of  the  critic 
whom  it  deserts.  The  whole  inner  life  of  men  moulds  the 
forms  of  language,  and  is  moulded  by  them  in  turn;  and 
as  surely  pines  when  they  are  rudely  treated  as  the  plant 
whose  vessels  you  bruise  or  try  to  replace  with  artificial 
tubes.  The  grouping  of  thought,  the  musical  scale  of 
feeling,  the  shading  and  harmonies  of  color  in  the  spec- 
trum of  imagination,  have  all  been  building,  as  it  were, 
the  molecules  of  speech  into  their  service;  and  if  you  heed- 
lessly alter  its  dispositions,  pulverize  its  crystals,  fi.x  its 
elastic  media,  and  turn  its  transparent  into  opaque,  you 
not  only  disturb  expression,  you  dislodge  the  very  things 
to  be  expressed.  And  in  proportion  as  the  idea  or  senti- 
ment thus  turned  adrift  is  less  of  a  mere  personal  char- 
acteristic, and  has  been  gathering  and  shaping  its  elements 
from  ages  of  various  affection  and  experience,  does  it  be- 
come less  possible  to  replace  it  by  any  equivalents,  or 
dispense  with  its  function  by  any  act  of  will." 

To  conclude:  there  is  one  startling  fact  connected  with 


104  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

words,  which  should  make  all  men  ponder  what  they  utter. 
Not  only  is  every  wise  and  every  idle  word  recorded  in  tlirt 
book  of  divine  remembrance,  but  modern  science  has  shown 
that  they  produce  an  abiding  impression  on  the  globe  we 
inhabit.  Plunge  your  hand  into  the  sea,  and  you  raise  its 
level,  however  imperceptibly,  at  the  other  side  of  the 
globe.  In  like  manner,  the  pulsations  of  the  air,  once  set 
in  motion,  never  cease;  its  waves,  raised  by  each  sound, 
travel  the  entire  round  of  earth's  and  ocean's  surface;  and 
in  less  than  twenty-four  hours,  every  atom  of  atmosphere 
takes  up  the  altered  movement  resulting  from  that  sound. 
The  air  itself  is  one  vast  library,  on  whose  pages  are 
written  in  imperishable  characters  all  that  man  has  spoken, 
or  even  whispered.  Not  a  word  that  goes  from  the  lips 
into  the  air  can  ever  die,  until  the  atmosphere  which 
wraps  our  huge  globe  in  its  embrace  has  passed  away  for- 
ever, and  the  heavens  are  no  more.  There,  till  the  heav- 
ens are  rolled  together  as  a  scroll,  will  still  live  the  jests 
of  the  profane,  the  curses  of  the  ungodly,  the  scoffs  of  the 
atheist,  "  keeping  company  with  the  hours,"  and  circling 
the  earth  with  the  song  of  Miriam,  the  wailing  of  Jere- 
miah, the  low  prayer  of  Stephen,  the  thunders  of  Demos- 
thenes, and  the  denunciations  of  Burke. 

"  Words  are  mighty,  words  are  living; 

Serpents,  witli  their  venomous  stings, 
Or,  bright  angels,  crowding  round  us 

With  heaven's  liglit  upon  their  wings; 
Every  word  has  its  own  spirit. 

True  or  false,  that  never  dies ; 
Every  word  man's  lips  have  uttered 

Echoes  in  God's  skies." 


CHAPTER  III. 

GRAND  WORDS. 

The  fool  hath  planted  his  memory  with  an  army  of  words.— SHAKEsrKAnE. 

In  the  commerce  of  speech  use  only  coin  of  gold  and  silver.  .  .  Be  pro- 
found with  clear  terms,  and  not  with  obscure  terms. —  Joubert. 

The  more  you  have  studied  foreign  languages,  the  more  you  will  be  dis- 
posed to  keep  Ollendorfl  in  the  background;  the  proper  result  of  such  ac- 
quirements is  visible  in  a  liner  ear  for  words. —  T.  W.  Higginson. 

Never  be  grandiloquent  when  you  want  to  drive  home  a  searching  truth. 
Don't  whip  with  a  switch  that  has  the  leaves  on,  if  you  want  to  tingle.— II. 
W.  Beecher. 

TT  is  a  trite  remark  that  words  are  the  representatives 
-■■-  of  things  and  thoughts,  as  coin  represents  wealth. 
You  carry  in  your  pocket  a  doubloon  or  a  dollar,  stamped 
by  the  king  or  state,  and  you  are  the  virtual  owner  of" 
whatever  it  will  purchase.  But  who  affixes  the  stamp 
upon  a  word?  No  prince  or  potentate  was  ever  strong 
enough  to  make  or  unmake  a  single  word.  Caesar  con- 
fessed that  with  all  his  power  he  could  not  do  it,  and 
Claudius  could  not  introduce  even  a  new  letter.  He 
attempted  to  introduce  the  consonant  V,  as  distinct  from 
U,  the  Roman  alphabet  having  but  one  character  for  both; 
but  he  could  not  make  his  subjects  accept  the  new  letter, 
though  he  could  kill  or  plunder  them  at  pleasure.  Cicero 
tried  his  hand  at  word-coining;  but  though  he  proved 
a  skilful  mint -master,  and  struck  some  admirable  trial 
pieces,  which  were  absolutely  needed  to  facilitate  mental 
exchanges,  yet  they  did  not  gain  circulation,  and  were 
thrown  back  upon  his  hands.  But  that  which  defied  the 
power   of   CiEsar    and    of   Cicero    does    not   transcend    the 

105 


100  words;    TIIEIU    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

ability  of  many  writers  of  our  own  day,  some  of  whom 
are  adepts  in  the  art  of  word-coining,  and  are  daily  mint- 
ing terms  and  phrases  which  must  make  even  Noah 
Webster,  boundless  as  was  his  charity  for  new  words, 
turn  in  his  grave.  It  is  doubtful,  however,  whether  these 
persons  do  so  much  damage  to  our  noble  English  language 
as  those  who  vulgarize  it  by  the  use  of  penny-a-liner 
phrases.  There  is  a  large  and  growing  class  of  speakers 
and  writers,  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  who,  apparently 
despising  the  homely  but  terse  and  telling  words  of  their 
mother  tongue,  never  use  a  Saxon  term,  if  they  can  find 
what  Lord  Brougham  calls  a  "  long-tailed  word  in  'ositij  or 
\ition'"  to  do  its  work. 

What  is  the  cause  of  this?  Is  it  the  extraordinary,  not 
to  say  excessive,  attention  now  given  by  persons  of  all  ages 
to  foreign  languages,  to  the  neglect  of  our  own?  Is  it  the 
comparative  inattention  given  to  correct  diction  by  the 
teachers  in  the  schools  of  to-day;  or  is  it  because  the 
favorite  books  of  the  young  are  sensational  stories,  made 
pungent,  and,  in  a  sense,  natui-al,  through  the  lavish  use  of 
all  the  colloquialisms  and  vulgarisms  of  low  life?  Shall 
we  believe  that  it  is  because  there  is  little  individuality 
and  independence  in  these  days,  that  the  words  of  so  few 
persons  are  flavored  with  their  idiosyncrasies;  that  it  is 
from  conscious  poverty  of  thought  that  they  try  to  trick 
out  their  ideas  in  glittering  words  and  phrases,  just  as,  by 
means  of  high-heeled  boots,  a  laced  coat,  and  a  long 
feather,  a  fellow  with  a  little  soul  and  a  weak  body  might 
try  to  pass  muster  as  a  bold  grenadier?  Or  is  it  because 
of  the  prevalent  mania  for  the  sensational, —  the  craving 
for  novelty  and  excitement,  which  is  almost  universal  in 
these  days, —  that  so  many  persons  make  sense  subservient 


GRAXn    "WORDS.  107 

to  sound,  and  avoid  calling  things  by  their  proper  names? 
Or,  finally,  to  take  a  more  charitable  view  of  the  case, 
is  it  because  it  is  impossible  for  inaccurate  minds  to  hit 
the  exact  truth,  and  describe  a  thing  just  as  they  have 
seen  it, —  to  express  degrees  of  feeling,  to  observe  measures 
and  proportions,  and  define  a  sensation  as  it  was  felt? 
Was  Talleyrand  wrong  when  he  said  that  language  was 
given  to  man  to  conceal  his  thought;  and  was  it  really 
given  to  hide  his  want  of  thought?  Is  it,  indeed,  the  main 
object  of  expression  to  convey  the  smallest  possible  amount 
of  meaning  with  the  greatest  possible  amount  of  appear- 
ance of  meaning;  and,  since  nobody  can  be  "so  wise  as 
Thurlow  looked,"  to  look  as  wise  as  Thurlow  while  utter- 
ing the  veriest  truisms? 

lie  all  this  as  it  may,  in  nothing  else  is  the  lack  of 
simplicity,  which  is  so  characteristic  of  our  times,  more 
marked  than  in  the  prevailing  forms  of  expression.  "  The 
curse  and  the  peril  of  language  in  our  day,  and  partic- 
ularly in  this  country,"  says  an  American  critic,  who 
may,  perhaps,  croak  at  times,  but  who  has  done  much 
good  service  as  a  literary  policeman  in  the  repression  of 
verbal  licentiousness,  "  is  that  it  is  at  the  mercy  of  men 
who,  instead  of  being  content  to  use  it  well,  according 
to  their  honest  ignorance,  use  it  ill,  according  to  their 
affected  knowledge;  who,  being  vulgar,  would  seem  ele- 
gant; who,  being  empty,  would  seem  full;  who  make  up 
in  pretence  what  they  lack  in  reality;  and  whose  little 
thoughts,  let  off  in  enormous  phrases,  sound  like  fire- 
crackers in  an  empty  barrel."  In  the  estimation  of  many 
writers  at  the  present  day,  the  great,  crowning  vice  in 
the  use  of  words  is,  apparently,  to  employ  plain,  straight- 
forward English.     The  simple   Saxon   is  not  good  enough 


108  words:  their  use  and  abuse. 

for  their  purposes,  and  so  they  array  their  ideas  in  "big, 
dictionary  words,"  derived  from  the  Latin,  and  load  their 
style  with  expletives  as  tasteless  as  the  streamers  of 
tattered  finery  that  flutter  about  the  person  of  a  dilapi- 
dated belle.  The  "  high  polite,"  in  short,  is  their  favorite 
style,  and  the  good  old  Spartan  rule  of  calling  a  spade 
a  spade  they  hold  in  thorough  contempt.  Their  great 
recipe  for  elegant  or  powerful  writing  is  to  call  the  most 
common  things  by  the  most  uncommon  names.  Provided 
that  a  word  is  out-of-the-way,  unusual,  or  far-fetched, — 
and  especially  if  it  is  one  of  many  syllables, —  they  care 
little  whether  it  is  apt  and  fit  or  not. 

With  them  a  fire  is  always  "  the  devouring  element," 
or  a  "conflagration";  and  the  last  term  is  often  used 
where  there  is  no  meeting  of  flames,  as  when  a  town  is 
fired  in  several  places,  but  when  only  one  building  is 
burned;  the  fire  never  burns  a  house,  but  it  always  "con- 
sumes an  edifice,"  unless  it  is  got  under,  in  which  case 
"  its  progress  is  arrested."  A  railroad  accident  is  always 
"  a  holocaust,"  and  its  victims  are  named  under  the  "  death 
roll."  A  man  who  is  the  first  to  do  a  thing  "  takes  the 
initiative."  Instead  of  loving  a  woman,  a  man  "  becomes 
attached"  to  her;  instead  of  losing  his  mother  by  death, 
he  "  sustains  a  bereavement  of  his  maternal  relative."  A 
dog's  tail,  in  the  pages  of  these  writers,  is  his  "  caudal 
appendage";  a  dog  breaker,  "a  kunopsedist " ;  and  a  fish- 
pond they  call  by  no  less  lofty  a  title  than  "  piscine  pre- 
serve." Ladies,  in  their  classic  pages,  have  ceased  to  be 
married,  like  those  poor,  vulgar  creatures,  their  grand- 
mothers; they  are  "led  to  the  hymeneal  altar."  Of 
the  existence  of  such  persons  as  a  man,  a  woman,  a  boy, 
or  a  girl^  these  writers  are  profoundly  ignorant;  though 


GRAXD    WORDS.  109 

they  often  speak  of  "  individuals,"  "  gentlemen,"  "  char- 
acters,"" and  "  parties,"  and  often  recognize  the  existence 
of  "juveniles"  and  "juvenile  members  of  the  commu- 
nity." "  Individual "'  is  another  piece  of  pompous  inanity 
which  is  very  current  now.  In  "  Guesses  at  Truth " 
mention  is  made  of  a  celebrated  preacher,  who  was  so 
destitute  of  all  feeling  for  decorum  in  language,  as  to 
call  our  Saviour  "this  eminent  individual.''  "Individual" 
is  a  good  Latin  word,  and  serves  a  good  purpose  when  it 
distinguishes  a  person  from  a  people  or  class,  as  it  served 
a  good  purpose  in  the  scholastic  philosophy;  but  would 
Cicero  or  Duns  Scotus  have  called  a  great  man  an  eminens 
indiciduum  ?  These  "  individuals,"  strange  to  say,  are 
never  dressed,  but  always  "attired";  they  never  take  off 
their  clothes,  but  "  divest  themselves  of  their  habiliments," 
which  is  so  much  grander. 

"  In  the  church,"  says  St.  Paul,  "  I  had  rather  speak 
five  words  with  my  understanding,  that  by  my  voice  I 
might  teach  others  also,  than  ten  thousand  words  in  an 
unknown  tongue."  Not  so  think  some  of  the  preachers  of 
the  Gospel  of  the  present  day,  if  we  may  judge  them  by 
the  language  they  use  in  their  discourses.  To  give  their 
sermons  a  philosophical  air,  or  because  simple  language  is 
not  to  their  taste,  they  invest  their  discourses  with  the 
technicalities  of  science  and  philosophy.  They  never  speak 
of  so  old-fashioned  a  thing  as  the  will,  but  always  of 
"volition";  duty,  with  thorn,  is  never  duty  simply,  but 
alwa3's  "moral  obligation"';  and  their  sermons  abound  in 
"  necessary  relations,"  "  moral  and  physical  necessities," 
"  intelloriual  processes,"  "laws  of  nature,"  and  "arguments 
a  ])iiori  and  a  poHterioriy  It  was  a  preacher  of  this  class, 
wno  haviiiff   occasion   to  tell    his    hearers    that    there   was 


110  UOKDS;    TlIEIIl    U.SE    AND    ABUSE. 

not  one  Gospel  for  the  rich  and  another  for  the  poor, 
informed  them  that,  "  if  they  would  not  be  saved  on 
'  general  principles,'  they  could  not  be  saved  at  all."  Who 
can  doubt  that  such  language  as  this  is  not  only  poorly 
understood,  if  understood  it  is,  by  the  ordinary  hearer, 
but  is  far  less  effective  than  the  simple  Saxon  words  which 
might  be  used  to  convey  the  same  ideas?  Some  years  ago 
a  white  minister  preached  in  a  plain,  direct  style  to  a 
church  of  negroes  in  the  South,  whose  "  colored  "  pastor 
was  greatly  addicted  to  the  use  of  high-flown  language 
in  his  sermons.  In  the  season  of  exhortation  and  prayer 
that  followed,  an  old  negro  thanked  the  Lord  for  the 
various  blessings  of  the  Sabbath  and  the  sanctuar}',  and 
especially,  he  added,  "  we  thank  Thee  that  to-day  we  have 
been  fed  from  a  loiv  crib.''  Would  it  not  be  well  for 
preachers  generally  to  remember  that  many  of  Christ's 
flock  are  "  little  ones,"  whose  necks  are  short,  and  that  they 
may  consequently  .starve,  if  their  food,  however  nutritious, 
is  placed  in  too  lofty  a  crib? 

But  preachers  are  not  the  only  anti-Saxons  of  our  day; 
we  may  find  them  in  nearlj^  all  the  classes  of  society, — 
pei'sons  who  never  tell  us  that  a  man  is  asleep,  but  say 
that  he  is  "  locked  in  slumber";  who  deem  it  vulgar,  and 
perhaps  cruel,  to  say  that  a  criminal  was  hanged,  but  very 
elegant  to  say  that  he  was  "  launched  into  eternity."  A 
person  of  their  acquaintance  never  does  so  low^  a  thing 
as  to  break  his  leg;  he  "fractures  his  limb."  They 
never  see  a  man  fall;  but  sometimes  see  "an  individual 
precipitated."  Our  Latin  friends, —  fortunate  souls, —  never 
have  their  feelings  hurt,  though  it  must  be  confessed  that 
their  "sensibilities"  are  sometimes  dreadfully  "lacerated." 
Above  the  necessities  of  their  poor  fellow-creatures,  they 


GRAND    "WORDS.  Ill 

never  do  so  vulgar  a  thing  as  to  eat  a  meal;  they  always 
"  partake  of  a  repast,"  which  is  so  much  more  elegant. 
They  never  do  so  commonplace  a  thing  as  to  take  a  walk; 
they  "  make  a  pedestrian  excursion."  A  conjurer  with 
them  is  a  "  prestidigitator ";  a  fortune-teller,  a"vaticina- 
tor."  As  Pascal  says,  they  mask  all  nature.  There  is  with 
tliem  no  king,  but  an  "august  monarch";  no  Paris,  but 
a  '"capital  of  a  kingdom."  Even  our  barbers  have  got 
upon  stilts.  They  no  longer  sell  tooth-powder  and  shaving- 
soaji,  like  the  old  fogies,  their  fathers,  but  "  odonto,"  and 
"dentifrice,"  and  "  rypophagon ";  and  they  themselves, 
from  the  barber-ous  persons  they  once  were,  have  been 
transformed  into  "  arligfs  in  hair."  The  medical  faculty, 
too,  have  caught  the  spirit  of  the  age.  Who  would  suspect 
that  "epistaxis"  means  simply  bleeding  at  the  nose,  and 
"emollient  cataplasm"  only  a  poultice?  Fancy  one  school- 
boy doubling  up  his  fist  at  another,  and  telling  him  to 
look  out  for  epistaxis!  Who  would  dream  that  "anheidro- 
hepseterion  "  (advertised  in  the  London  "Times")  means 
only  a  saucepan,  or  "taxidermist"  a  bird-stuffer?  Is  it 
not  remarkable  that  tradesmen  have  ceased  "  sending  in  " 
their  "little  bills,"  and  now  only  "  render  their  accounts"? 
"  There  ai-e  people,"  says  Landor,  "  who  think  they 
write  and  speak  finely,  merely  because  they  have  forgot- 
ten the  language  in  which  their  fathers  and  mothers  used 
to  talk  to  them."  As  in  dress,  deportment,  etc.,  so  in 
language,  the  dread  of  vulgarity,  as  Whatcly  has  suggested, 
constantly  besetting  those  who  are  half  conscious  that  they 
are  in  danger  of  it,  drives  them  into  the  opposite  extreme 
of  affected  finery.     They  act  upon  the  advice  of  Boileau: 

"  (Jnoiquc  voiis  ocrivioz,  I'vitcz  la  bnssessr; 
Le  style  Ic  moiiis  noble  a  poiirtant  ea  noblesse;" 


112  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

and,  to  avoid  the  undignified,  according  to  them,  it  is  only 
neeessai-y  not  to  call  things  by  their  right  names.  Hence 
the  use  of  "residence"  for  house,  "electric  fluid"  for 
lightning,  "recently  deceased"  for  lately  dead,  "encomium" 
for  praise,  "  location"  for  place,  "  locate "  for  put,  "  lower 
limb"  for  leg,  "sacred  edifice"  for  church,  "  attired"  for 
clad, —  all  of  which  have  so  learned  an  air,  and  are  pre- 
ferred to  the  simpler  words  for  the  same  reason,  appar- 
ently, that  led  Mr.  Samuel  Weller,  when  writing  his 
famous  valentine  to  Mary,  to  prefer  "circumscribed"  to 
"  circumwented,"  as  having  a  deeper  meaning. 

Such  persons  forget  that  glass  will  obstruct  the  light 
quite  as  much  when  beautifully  painted  as  when  discolored 
with  dirt;  and  that  a  style  studded  with  far-fetched  epi- 
thets and  high-sounding  phrases  may  be  as  dark  as  one 
abounding  in  colloquial  vulgarisms.  Who  does  not  s^'m- 
i:>athize  with  the  indignation  of  Dr.  Johnson,  when,  taking 
up  at  the  house  of  a  country  friend  a  so  called  "  Liberal 
Translation  of  the  New  Testament,"  he  read,  in  the 
eleventh  chapter  of  John,  instead  of  the  simple  and  touch- 
ing words,  "Jesus  wept," — "Jesus,  the  Saviour  of  the 
world,  overcome  with  grief,  burst  into  a  flood  of  tears"? 
'''Puppy!'''  exclaimed  the  critic,  as  he  threw  down  the 
book  in  a  rage;  and  had  the  author  been  present,  John- 
son would  doubtless  have  thrown  it  at  his  head.  Yet 
the  great  literary  bashaw,  while  he  had  an  eagle's  eye 
for  the  faults  of  others,  was  unconscious  of  his  own  sins 
against  simplicity,  and,  though  he  spoke  like  a  wit,  too 
often  wrote  like  a  pedant.  He  had,  in  fact,  a  dialect 
of  his  ow'n,  which  has  been  wittily  styled  Johnsonese. 
Goldsmith  hit  him  in  a  vulnerable  spot  when  he  said: 
"  Doctor,   if  you  were  to   write  a  fable  about  little  fishes, 


GKAND    WORDS.  113 

you  would  make  them  talk  like  whales."  The  faults  of 
his  pompous,  swelling  diction,  in  which  the  frivolity  of 
a  coxcomb  is  described  in  the  same  rolling  periods  and 
with  the  same  gravity  of  antithesis  with  which  he  would 
thunder  against  rebellion  and  fanaticism,  are  hardly  exag- 
gerated by  a  wit  of  his  own  time  who  calls  it 

"  A  turgid  style, 
Which  gives  to  an  inch  tlie  importance  of  a  mile; 
Uplifts  liie  clul)  of  Hercules  — for  what? 
To  crush  a  butterfly,  or  brain  a  gnat; 
Bids  ocean  labor  with  tremendous  roar. 
To  heave  a  cockle-shell  upon  the  shore; 
Sets  wheels  on  wheels  In  motion, — what  a  clatter! 
To  force  up  one  poor  nlpperkin  of  water; 
Alike  in  every  theme  his  pompous  art. 
Heaven's  awful  thunder,  or  a  rumbling  cart." 

One  of  the  latest  "modern  improvements"  in  speech 
is  the  substitution  of  "  lady  "  and  "  female  "  for  the  good 
old  English  "  woman."  On  the  front  of  Cooper's  Reading 
Room,  in  the  city  of  New  York,  is  the  sign  in  golden 
letters,  "  Male  and  Female  Reading  Rooms."  Suppose 
Scott,  in  his  noble  tribute  to  women  for  their  devotion 
and  tenderness  to  men  in  their  hour  of  suffering,  had 
sung 

"Oh,  LADIES,  in  our  hours  of  ease,"'  etc., 

would  not  the  lines  have  been  far  more  touching?  An 
English  writer  says  truly  that  the  law  of  euphemisms  is 
somewhat  capricious;  "one  cannot  always  tell  which  words 
are  decent  and  which  are  not.  .  .  It  really  seems  as  if  the 
old-fashioned  feminine  of  '  man '  were  fast  getting  pro- 
scribed. We,  undiscerning  male  creatures  that  we  are, 
might  have  thought  that  '  woman'  was  a  more  elegant  and 
more  distinctive  title  than  'female.'  We  read  only  the 
other  day  a  report  of  a  lecture  on  the  poet  Crabbe,  in 
which  she   who  was  afterward   Mrs.  Crabbe  was  spoken  of 


114  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

as  'a  female  to  whom  he  had  formed  an  attachment.'  To 
us,  indeed,  it  seems  that  a  man's  wife  should  be  spoken  of 
in  some  way  which  is  not  equally  applicable  to  a  ewe  lami) 
or  a  favorite  inare.  But  it  was  a  'female'  who  delivered 
the  lecture,  and  we  suppose  the  females  know  best  about 
their  own  affairs." 

Can  any  person  account  for  the  apparent  antipathy 
which  many  writers  and  speakers  have  to  the  <fOod  Saxon 
verb  "to  begin"?  Ninety-nine  out  of  every  hundred  per- 
sons one  talks  with  are  sure  to  prefer  the  French  words 
"  to  commence  "  and  "  to  essay,"  and  the  tendency  is  strong 
to  prefer  "  to  inaugurate  "  to  either.  Nothing  in  our  day 
is  begun,  not  even  dinner;  it  is  "inaugurated  with  soup." 
In  their  fondness  for  the  French  words,  many  persons  are 
betrayed  into  solecisms.  Forgetting,  or  not  knowing,  that, 
while  "to  begin"  may  be  followed  by  an  infinitive  or  a 
gerund,  "  to  commence"  is  transitive,  and  must  be  followed 
by  a  noun  or  its  equivalent,  they  talk  of  "  commencing  to 
do"  a  thing,  "essaying  to  do  well,"'  etc.  Persons  who 
think  that  "  begin"  is  not  stately  enough,  or  that  it  is  even 
vulgar,  would  do  well  to  look  into  the  pages  of  Milton  and 
Shakespeare.  With  all  his  fondness  for  Romanic  words, 
the  former  hardly  once  uses  "commence"  and  "commence- 
ment"; and  the  latter  is  not  only  content  with  the  idiom- 
atic word,  but  even  shortens  it,  as  in  the  well  known  line 
that  depicts  so  vividly  the  guilt- wasted  soul  of  ^lacbeth: 

"I  'gin  to  grow  a-wcan-  of  the  sun."' 

What  a  shock  would  eveiy  right-minded  reader  receive  if, 
upon  opening  his  Bible,  he  should  find,  in  place  of  the  old 
familiar  words,  the  following:  "  In  the  commencement  God 
created  the  heavens  and   the  earth,"  — "  The   fear  of  the 


GRAND    WORDS.  1  1  ") 

Lord  is  the  cowmencement  of  wisdom  !"  Well  did  ColeiidLfe 
say:  "  Intense  study  of  the  Bible  will  keep  any  writer  from 
being  vulgar  in  point  of  style."  "Commence"  is  a  good 
word  enough,  but,  being  of  outlandish  origin,  should  never 
take  the  place  of  "  begin,*'  except  for  the  sake  of  rhythm 
or  variety. 

Another  of  these  grand  words  is  "  imbroglio."  It  is 
from  the  Italian,  and  means  an  intricate  or  complicated 
plot.  Why,  then,  should  a  quarrel  in  the  Cabinet  at  Wash- 
ington, or  a  prospective  quarrel  with  France  or  England, 
be  called  an  "  imbroglio"?  Again,  will  any  one  explain  to 
us 'the  meaning  of  "interpellation,"  so  often  used  b}'  the 
correspondents  of  our  daily  newspapers?  The  word  prop- 
erly means  an  interruption;  yet  when  an  opposition  mem- 
ber of  the  French  or  Italian  Pai'liament  asks  a  question 
of  a  minister,  he  is  said  "  to  put  an  interpellation."  Why 
should  an  army  be  said  to  be  "  decimated,"  without  regard 
to  the  number  or  nature  of  its  losses?  The  original  mean- 
ing of  this  term  was  grave,  and  often  terrible;  it  meant 
no  less  than  taking  the  tenth  of  a  man's  substance,  or 
shooting  every  tenth  man  in  a  mutinous  regiment,  the 
victims  being  called  out  by  lot.  "  This  appalling  charac- 
ter of  decimation  lay  in  the  likelihood  that  innocent  per- 
sons, slain  in  cold  blood,  might  suffer  for  the  guilty.  13ut 
the  peculiar  horror  vanishes  when  we  alter  the  conditions; 
and  a  regiment  which  has  taken  part  in  a  hard-fought 
battle,  and  comes  off  the  field  only  decimated, —  that  is  to 
say,  with  nine  living  and  unscathed  for  each  man  left  on 
the  field, — might  be  accounted  rather  fortunate  than  the 
reverse."  Why,  again,  should  "donate"  be  jireferred  to 
"give"?  Does  it  show  a  larger  soul,  a  more  magnificent 
liberalitv,   to  "donate"   than   to  give?     Must  we  ''donate 


IIG  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

the  devil  his  due,"  when  we  would  be  unusually  charita- 
ble? Why  should  "elect"  be  preferred  to  "choose,"  when 
there  is  no  election  whatever;  or  why  is  "balance"  pref- 
erable to  "  remainder "  ?  As  a  writer  has  well  said  : 
"  Would  any  man  in  his  senses  dare  to  quote  King  David 
as  saying:  'They  are  full  of  children,  and  leave  the  balance 
of  their  substance  unto  their  babes'?  or  read,  'Surely  the 
wrath  of  man  shall  praise  thee:  the  balance  of  wrath  thou 
shalt  restrain,'  where  the  translators  of  our  Bible  wrote 
'the  remainder'?  And  if  any  one  went  into  the  nursery, 
and  telling  that  tale  of  perennial  interest  of  the  little  boys 
that  '  a-sliding  went,  a-sliding  went,  a-sliding  went,  all  on  a 
summer's  day,'  should,  after  recounting  how  '  they  all  fell 
in,  they  all  fell  in,  they  all  fell  in,'  add  '  the  balance  ran 
away,'  would  there  not  go  up  a  chorus  of  tiny  but  indig- 
nant protests  against  this  mutilation,  which  would  enlist 
a  far  wider  sympathy  than  some  of  the  proposed  changes 
in  the  texts  of  classic  authors,  which  have  set  editors  and 
commentators  at  loggerheads?" 

Again,  Avhy  should  one  say  "  rendition "  for  perform- 
ance, "enactment"  for  acting,  or  "nude"  for  naked?  In 
the  seventeenth  century,  certain  fanatics  in  England  ran 
about  without  clothes,  crying:  "  We  are  the  naked  Truth." 
Had  they  lived  in  this  age  of  refinement,  instead  of  shock- 
ing their  countrymen  with  such  indelicate  expressions,  they 
would  have  said,  "We  are  Verity  in  a  nude  condition"; 
and  had  any  person  clothed  them,  he  would  have  been 
said  to  have  "  rehabilitated  "  them.  More  offensive  than 
any  of  these  grandiose  words  is  "  intoxicated  "  in  place  of 
"drunk,"  which  it  has  nearly  banished.  A  man  can  be 
intoxicated  only  when  he  has  lost  his  wits,  not  by 
ijuantity,   but   by   quality, — by  drinking    liquor   that   has 


GRAND    WORDS.  117 

been  drugged.  "Intoxicated,"  hovveve  ,  lias  five  syllables; 
drunk  has  but  one;  so  the  former  carries  the  day  by  five 
to  one.  No  doubt  nine-tenths  of  those  who  drink  to 
excess  in  this  country,  are,  in  fact,  intoxicated,  or  poisoned; 
still,  the  two  words  should  not  be  confounded.  "Ovation" 
is  a  word  often  used  incorrectly,  as  when  an  emperor, 
empress,  king  or  queen,  on  making  a  triumphal  entry 
into  the  capital  of  a  state  amid  great  popular  enthusiasm, 
is  said  to  receive  an  "  ovation,"  though  such  an  honor  is 
distinctivel}'  reserved  for  meritorious  subjects  of  the  ruler. 
Sometimes  we  find  a  word  of  Latin  origin  used  in  a  sense 
precisely  opposite  to  the  true  one,  as  when  "  culminate," 
which  can  be  applied  only  to  something  which  has  reached 
the  limit  of  its  possible  height,  is  used  regarding  the 
career  of  some  wrong-doer,  which  is  said  to  "culminate" 
in  the  lowest  depths  of  degradation. 

Solomon  tells  us  that  there  is  nothing  new  under  the 
sun;  and  this  itching  for  pompous  forms  of  expression, 
this  contempt  for  plainness  and  simplicity  of  style,  is  as 
old  as  Aristotle.  In  the  third  book  of  his  "  Rhetoric,"  dis- 
cussing the  causes  of  frigidity  of  style,  he  speaks  of  one 
Alcidamas,  a  writer  of  that  time,  as  "employing  orna 
ments,  not  as  seasonings  to  discourse,  but  as  if  they  were 
the  only  food  to  live  upon.  He  does  not  say  '  sweat,'  but 
'the  humid  sweat';  a  man  goes  not  to  the  Isthmian  games, 
but  to  'the  collected  assembly  of  the  Isthmian  solemnity  '; 
laws  are  'the  legitimate  kings  of  commonwealths';  and 
a  race,  '  the  incursive  impulse  of  the  soul.'  A  rich  man 
is  not  bountiful,  but  the  '  artificer  of  universal  largess.'  " 
Is  it  not  curious  that  our  modern  Quicklys  and  Malaprops, 
who  often  pride  themselves  upon  tlieir  taste  for  swelling 
words  and  phrases,  and  their  skill  in  using  them,  should 


118  AVOIIDS;    THEIR    USE    AND    AIU'SE. 

have  been  anticipated  by  Alcidamas  two  thousand  years 
ago  ? 

The  abuse  of  the  queen's  English,  to  which  we  have 
called  attention,  did  not  begin  with  Americans.  It  began 
with  our  transatlantic  cousins,  who  employed  "ink-horn" 
terms  and  outlandish  phrases  at  a  very  early  period.  In 
"Harrison's  Chronicle"  we  are  told  that  after  the  Norman 
conquest  "the  English  tongue  grew  into  such  contempt 
at  court  that  most  men  thought  it  no  small  dishonor  to 
speak  any  English  there;  which  bravery  took  his  hold  at 
the  last  likewise  in  the  country  with  every  ploughman,  that 
even  the  very  carters  began  to  wax  weary  of  their  mother 
tongue,  and  labored  to  speak  French,  which  was  then 
counted  no  small  token  of  gentility." 

The  English  people  of  to-day  are  quite  as  much  addicted 
to  the  grandiose  style  as  the  Americans.  Gough,  in  one  of 
his  lectures,  speaks  of  a  card  which  he  saw  in  London,  in 
which  a  man  called  himself  "Illuminating  Artist  to  Her 
Majesty,"  the  fact  being  that  he  lighted  the  gas  lamps  near 
the  palace.  Mr.  E.  A.  Freeman,  the  English  historian, 
complained  in  a  recent  lecture  that  our  language  had  few 
friends  and  many  foes,  its  only  friends  being  ploughboys 
and  a  few  scholars.  The  pleasant  old  "  inns  "  of  England, 
he  said,  had  disappeared,  their  places  being  supplied  by 
"hotels,"  or  "establishments";  while  the  landlord  had 
made  way  for  the  "  lessee  of  the  establishment."  A  gentle- 
man going  into  a  shop  in  Regent  street  to  buy  half-raourn- 
ing  goods  was  referred  by  the  shopman  to  "  the  mitigated 
affliction  department."  The  besetting  sin  of  some  of  the 
ablest  British  writers  of  this  century  is  their  lack  of  sim- 
plicity of  language.  Sydney  Smith  said  of  Sir  James 
Mackintosh,  that  if  he  were  asked  for  a  definition  of  "  pep- 


GRAND    WORDS.  119 

per,"  he  would  reply  thus:  "Pepper  may  philosophically 
be  described  as  a  dusty  and  highly  pulverized  seed  of  an 
oriental  fruit;  an  article  rather  of  condiment  than  diet, 
which,  dispersed  lightly  over  the  surface  of  food,  with  no 
other  rule  than  the  caprice  of  the  consumer,  communicates 
pleasure,  rather  than  affords  nutrition;  and  by  adding  a 
tropical  flavor  to  the  gross  and  succulent  viands  of  the 
North,  approximates  the  diiferent  regions  of  the  earth, 
explains  the  objects  of  commerce,  and  justifies  the  indus- 
try of  man." 

Francis  Jeffrey,  the  celebrated  critic,  had,  even  in  con- 
versation, an  artificial  style  and  language,  which  were  fit 
only  for  books  and  a  small  circle  of  learned  friends.  His 
diction  and  pronunciation,  it  is  said,  were  unintelligible  to 
the  mass  of  his  countrymen,  and  in  the  House  of  Commons 
offensive  and  ridiculous.  An  anecdote  told  in  illustration 
of  this  peculiarity  strikingly  shows  the  superiority  of  sim- 
ple to  high-flown  language  in  the  practical  business  of  life. 
In  a  trial,  which  turned  upon  the  intellectual  competency 
of  a  testator,  Jeffrey  asked  a  witness,  a  plain  countryman, 
whether  the  testator  was  "  a  man  of  intellectual  capacity," 
— "an  intelligent,  shrewd  man," — "a  man  of  capacity?" 
"Had  he  ordinary  mental  endowments?"  "What  d'ye 
mean,  sir  ?  "  asked  the  witness.  "  I  mean,"  replied  Jeffrey, 
testily,  "  was  the  man  of  sufficient  ordinary  intelligence  to 
qualify  him  to  manage  his  own  affairs?"  "I  dinna  ken," 
replied  the  chafed  and  mystified  witness, —  "Wad  ye  say 
the  question  ower  again,  sir  ?*"  Jeffrey  being  baffled, 
Cockburn  took  ui)  the  examination.  He  said:  "Ye  ken- 
ned Tammas ?"     "  Ou,  ay;    I  kenned   Tammas  weel; 

me  and  him  herded  together  when  we  were  laddies  [boys]." 
"Was  there  onything  in  the  cretur?"     "De'il  a  thing  but 


120  AVORDS;    TIIF.IR    USE    AND   ABUSE. 

what  the  spune  [spoon]  put  into  liini."  "  Would  you  have 
trusted  him  to  sell  a  cow  for  you?"  "A  cow!  I  wadna 
lippened  [trusted]  him  to  sell  a  calf."  Had  .Jeffrey  devoted 
a  review  article  to  the  subject,  he  could  not  have  given  a 
more  vivid  idea  of  the  testator's  incapacity  to  manage  his 
own  affairs. 

Our  readers  need  not  be  told  how  much  Carlyle  has 
done  to  teutonize  our  language  with  his  "  yardlongtailed  " 
German  compounds.  It  was  a  just  stroke  of  criticism 
when  a  New  York  auctioneer  introduced  a  miscellaneous 
lot  of  books  to  a  crowd  with  the  remark:  "  Gentlemen,  of 
this  lot  I  need  only  say,  six  volumes  are  by  Thomas  Car- 
lyle; the  seventh  is  written  in  the  English  language." 
Some  years  ago,  a  learned  doctor  of  divinity  and  uni- 
versity professor  in  Canada  wrote  a  work  in  which,  wish- 
ing to  state  the  simple  fact  that  the  "  rude  Indian "  had 
learned  the  use  of  firing,  he  delivered  himself  as  follows: 
"  He  had  made  slave  of  the  heaven-born  element,  the 
bi'other  of  the  lightning,  the  grand  alchemist  and  artif- 
icer of  all  times,  though  as  yet  he  knew  not  all  the  worth 
or  magical  power  that  was  in  him.  By  his  means  the 
sturdy  oak,  which  flung  abroad  its  stalwart  arms  and 
waved  its  leafy  honors  defiant  in  the  forest,  was  made  to 
bow  to  the  behest  of  the  simple  aborigines."  As  the  plain 
Scotchwoman  said  of  De  Quincey,  "the  bodie  has  an  awfu' 
sicht  o'  words!"  This  style  of  speaking  and  writing  has 
become  so  common  that  it  can  no  longer  be  considered 
wholly  vulgar.  It  is  gradually  working  upward;  it  is 
making  its  way  into  official  writings  and  grave  octavos; 
and  is  even  spoken  with  unction  in  pulpits  and  senates. 
Metaphysicians  are  wont  to  define  words  as  the  signs  of 
ideas;  but  with  many  persons,  they  appear  to  be,  not  so 


GRAND    WORDS.  121 

much  the  signs  of  their  thought,  as  the  .signs  of  the  signs 
of  their  thought.  Such,  doubtless,  was  the  case  with  the 
Scotch  clei-gyman,  whom  a  bonneted  abhorrer  of  legal 
preaching  was  overheard  eulogizing:  "Man,  John,  wasna 
yon  preachin'!  —  yon's  something  for  a  body  to  come  awa 
wi'.  The  way  that  he  smashed  down  his  text  into  so  mony 
heads  and  particulars,  just  a'  to  flinders!  Nine  heads  and 
twenty  particulars  in  ilka  head  —  and  sic  nionthfus  o 
grand  ivords! — an'  every  ane  o'  them  fu'  o'  meaning,  if 
we  but  kent  them.  We  hae  ill  improved  our  opportu- 
nities; man,  if  we  could  just  mind  onything  he  said,  it 
would  do  us  guid." 

The  whole  literature  of  notices,  handbills,  and  adver- 
tisements, in  our  day,  has  apparently  declared  "  war  to 
the  knife"  against  every  trace  of  the  Angles,  Jutes  and 
Saxons.  We  have  no  schoolmasters  now;  they  are  all 
"principals  of  collegiate  institutes";  no  copy-books,  but 
"  specimens  of  caligraphy";  no  ink,  but  "  writing  fluid"; 
no  physical  exercise,  but  "calisthenics"  or  "gymnastics." 
A  man  who  opens  a  groggery  at  some  corner  for  the  grat- 
ification of  drunkards,  instead  of  announcing  his  enter- 
prise by  its  real  name,  modestly  proclaims  through  the 
daily  papers  that  his  "  saloon  "  has  been  fitted  up  for  the 
reception  of  customers.  Even  the  learned  architects  of 
log  cabins  and  pioneer  cottages  can  find  names  for  them 
only  in  the  sonorous  dialects  of  oriental  climes.  Time  was 
when  a  farmhouse  was  a  farmhouse  and  a  porch  a  porch; 
but  now  the  one  is  a  "  villa  "  or  "  hacienda,"  and  the  other 
nothing  less  than  a  "veranda."  In  short,  this  genteel  slang 
pursues  us  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave.  In  old  times, 
when  our  fathers  and  mothers  died,  they  were  placed  in 
coffins,  and  buried    in   the  graveyard  or   burying   ground; 


122  AVOKDS;    THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

now,  when  an  unfortunate  "party"  or  "individual"  "de- 
ceases "  or  "  becomes  defunct,"  he  is  deposited  in  a  "  burial 
casket "  and  "  interred  in  a  cemetery."  It  matters  not 
that  the  good  old  words  "grave"  and  "  graveyard  "  have 
been  set  in  the  pure  amber  of  the  English  classics, —  that 
the  Bible  says,  "  There  is  no  wisdom  in  the  grave,"  "  Cruel 
as  the  grave,"  etc.  How  much  more  pompous  and  magnilo- 
quent the  Greek:  "There  is  no  wisdom  in  the  cemetery," 
"  Cruel  as  the  cemeteiy !  " 

Seriously,  let  us  eschew  all  these  vulgar  fineries  of 
style,  as  we  would  eschew  the  fineries  of  a  dandy.  Their 
legitimate  eifect  is  to  barbarize  our  language,  and  to  de- 
stroy all  the  peculiar  power,  distinctiveness,  and  appro- 
priateness of  its  terms.  Words  that  are  rai'ely  used  will 
at  last  inevitably  disappear;  and  thus,  if  not  speedily 
checked,  this  grandiloquence  of  expression  will  do  an  irre- 
parable injury  to  our  dear  old  English  tongue.  Poetry 
may  for  a  while  escape  the  effects  of  this  vulgar  cox- 
combry, because  it  is  the  farthest  out  of  the  reach  of  such 
contagion;  but,  as  prose  sinks,  so  must  poetry,  too,  be 
ultimately  dragged  down  into  the  general  gulf  of  feeble- 
ness and  inanition. 

It  was  a  saying  of  John  Foster  that  "  eloquence  resides 
in  the  thought,  and  no  words,  therefore,  can  make  that 
eloquent  which  will  not  be  so  in  the  plainest  that  could 
possibly  express  the  same."  Nothing,  therefore,  can  be 
more  absurd  than  the  notion  that  the  sounding  brass  and 
tinkling  cymbal  of  pompous  and  sonorous  language  are 
necessary  to  the  expression  of  the  sublime  and  powerful 
in  eloquence  and  poetry.  So  far  is  this  from  being  true, 
that  the  finest,  noblest,  and  most  spirit-stirring  sentiments 
ever  uttered,   have  been   couched,   not  in   sounding   poly- 


GRAND   WORDS.  123 

syllables  from  the  Greek  or  Latin,  but  in  the  simplest 
Saxon, —  in  the  language  we  hear  hourly  in  the  streets 
and  by  our  firesides.  Dr.  Johnson  once  said  that  "  big 
thinkers  require  big  words."  He  did  not  think  so  at  the 
time  of  the  great  Methodist  movement  in  the  last  century, 
when  "  the  ice  period  V  of  the  establishment  was  breaking 
up.  He  attributed  the  Wesleys'  success  to  their  plain, 
familiar  wa}'  of  preaching,  "  which,"  he  says,  "  clergymen 
of  genius  and  learning  ought  to  do  from  a  principle  of 
duty."  Arthur  Helps  tells  a  story  of  an  illiterate  soldier 
at  the  chapel  of  Lord  Morpeth's  castle  in  Ireland.  When- 
ever Archbishop  Whately  came  to  preach,  it  was  observed 
that  this  rough  private  was  always  in  his  place,  mouth 
open,  as  if  in  sympathy  with  his  ears.  Some  of  the  gen- 
tlemen playfully  took  him  to  task  for  it,  supposing  it  was 
due  to  the  usual  vulgar  admiration  of  a  celebrated  man. 
But  the  man  had  a  better  reason,  and  was  able  to  give 
it.  He  said,  "That  isn't  it  at  all.  The  Archbishop  is  eas}' 
to  understand.  There  are  no  fine  words  in  him.  A  fellow 
like  me,  now,  can  follow  along  and  take  every  bit  of  it  in." 
"  Whately's  simplicity,"  observes  a  writer  to  whom  we  are 
indebted  for  this  illustration,  "meant  no  lack  of  pith  or 
power.  The  whole  momentum  of  his  large  and  healthy 
brain  went  into  those  homely  sentences,  rousing  and  feed- 
ing the  rude  and  the  cultured  hearer's  liunger  alike,  as 
sweet  bread  and  juicy  meat  satisfy  a  natural  appetite." 

Emerson  observes  that  as  any  orator  at  the  bar  or  the 
senate  rises  in  his  thought,  he  descends  in  his  language; 
that  is,  when  he  rises  to  any  height  of  thought  or  of 
passion,  he  comes  down  to  a  level  with  the  ear  of  all 
his  audience.  "  It  is  the  oratory  of  John  Brown  and  of 
Abraham    Lincoln, 'the    one    at   Charleston,  the    other    at 


l::3-i  woiiDS;  their  use  and  abuse. 

Gettysburg,  in  the  two  best  specimens  of  oratory  vvc  have 
had  in  this  country."  Daniel  Webster,  in  his  youth,  was 
a  little  bombastic  in  his  speeches;  but  he  very  soon  dis- 
covered that  the  force  of  a  sentence  depends  chiefly  on 
its  meaning,  and  that  great  writing  is  that  in  which 
much  is  said  in  few  words,  and  those  the  simplest  that 
will  answer  the  purpose.  Having  made  this  discovery, 
he  became  "a  great  eraser  of  adjectives";  and  whether 
convincing  juries,  or  thundering  in  the  senate, —  whether 
demolishing  Hayne,  or  measuring  swords  with  Calhoun, — 
on  all  occasions  used  the  plainest  words.  "  You  will  find," 
said  he  to  a  friend,  "in  my  speeches  to  juries,  no  hard 
words,  no  Latin  phrases,  no  fieri  facias;  and  that  is  the 
secret  of  my  style,  if  I  have  any." 

Chaucer  says,  in  praise  of  his  Virginia,  that 

"No  contrefited  termcs  had  she 
To  semen  wise;" 

and  if  any  one  would  write  or  speak  well,  his  English 
should  be  genuine,  not  counterfeit.  The  simplest  words 
that  will  convey  one's  ideas  are  always  best.  What  can 
be  simpler  and  yet  more  sublime  than  the  "  Let  there  be 
light,  and  there  was  light!"  of  Moses,  which  Longinus  so 
admired?  Would  it  be  an  improvement  to  say,  "  Let 
there  be  light,  and  there  was  a  solar  illumination"?  "I 
am  like  a  child  picking  up  pebbles  on  the  seashore,"  said 
Newton.  Had  he  said  he  was  like  an  awe-struck  votary, 
lying  prostrate  before  the  stupendous  majesty  of  the  cos- 
mical  universe,  and  the  mighty  and  incomprehensible 
Ourgos  which  had  created  all  things,  we  might  think  it 
very  fine,  but  should  not  carry  in  our  memories  such  a 
luggage  of  words.  The  fiery  eloquence  of  the  field  and 
the    forum    springs   upon    the   vulgar    idiom    as  a  soldier 


GRAND    WOliDS.  125 

leaps  upon  his  horse.  "Trust  in  tlie  Lord,  and  keep  your 
powder  dry,"  said  Cromwell  to  bis  soldiers  on  the  eve  of 
a  battle.  "  Silence,  you  thirty  voices!  "  roars  Mirabeau  to 
a  knot  of  opposers  around  the  tribune.  "  Fd  sell  the  shirt 
oft"  my  back  to  support  the  war!"  cries  Lord  Chatham; 
and  again,  "Conquer  the  Americans!  I  might  as  well  think 
of  driving  them  before  me  with  this  crutch."'  "  I  know," 
says  Kossuth,  speaking  of  the  march  of  intelligence,  "that 
the  light  has  spread,  and  that  even  the  bayonets  think.'' 
"You  may  shake  me,  if  you  please,"  said  a  little  Yankee 
constable  to  a  stout,  burly  culprit  wliom  he  had  come  to 
arrest,  and  who  threatened  violence,  "but  recollect,  if 
you  do  it,  you  don't  shake  a  chap  of  five-feet-six;  you've 
got  to  shake  the  ivJiole  State  of  Massachusetts!''  When  a 
Hoosier  was  asked  by  a  Yankee  how  much  lie  weighed, — 
"Well,"  said  he,  "commonly  I  weigh  about  one  hundred 
and  eighty;  but  when  Fni  mad  I  weigh  a  ton!"  "Were 
I  to  die  at  this  moment,"  wrote  Nelson  after  the  battle 
of  the  Nile,  ''''''more  frigates'  would  be  found  written  on 
my  heart."  The  "Don't  give  up  the  ship!"  of  our  mem- 
orable sea-captain  stirs  the  heart  like  the  sound  of  a 
trumpet.  Had  lie  exhorted  the  men  to  fight  to  the  last 
gasp  in  defence  of  their  imperilled  liberties,  their  altars, 
and  the  glory  of  America,  the  words  might  have  been 
historic,  but  they  would  not  have  been  quoted  vernacu- 
larly, as  they  have  been,  for  over  threescore  years  and 
ten. 

There  is  another  phase  of  the  popular  leaning  to  the 
grandiose  style,  which  is  not  less  reprehensible  than  that 
which  we  have  noticed;  we  mean  the  affectation  of  foi'eign 
words  and  phrases.  As  foreign  travel  has  incieased,  and 
the  studv  of    foreiirn  languages  has  become  fashionable  in 


120  words;  tiieik  use  and  abuse. 

our  country,  this  vice  has  spread  till  society  in  some  places, 
like  Arinado  and  llolofernes,  seems  to  have  been  at  a  great 
feast  of  languages,  and  stolen  the  scraps.  Many  persons 
scarcely  deign  to  call  anything  by  its  proper  English  name, 

liut,  as  if  tliey  Ijelieved  with  lUitler,  that 

"He  that's  but  able  to  express 
No  sense  at  all  iu  several  languages, 
Will  pass  for  learneder  than  he  that's  known 
To  speak  strongest  reason  in  his  own," — 

they  apply  to  it  some  German,  French,  or  Italian  word. 
In  their  dialect  people  are  biases,  and  imsses,  or  have  nn  air 
distingue;  in  petto,  dolce  far  niente,  are  among  their  pet 
phrases;  and  not  infrequently  they  betray  their  ignorance 
by  some  ludicrous  blunder,  as  when  they  use  boqiiet  for 
bouquet,  soubriquet  for  sobriquet,  and  talk  of  a  sous, 
instead  of  a  sou,  a  mistake  as  laughable  as  the  French- 
man's "  un  pence."  Some  of  the  modern  fashionable  nov- 
elists and  writers  of  books  of  travel  have  even  shown  so 
bad  a  taste  as  to  state  in  German,  French,  or  Italian, 
whatever  is  supposed  to  have  been  said  by  Germans, 
Frenchmen,  or  Italians.  In  Currer  Bell's  "  Villette "  a 
large  proportion  of  the  dialogue,  even  in  pages  contain- 
ing the  very  marrow  of  the  plot,  is  thus  written  in  French, 
making  the  book,  though  an  English  book,  unintelligible 
to  an  Englishman,  however  familiar  with  his  native 
tongue,  unless  he  has  mastered  a  foreign  one  also,  and 
that  not  in  its  purity,  but  "  after  the  scole  of  Stratford- 
atte-Bowe."  In  striking  contrast  to  this  taste  for  exotics 
is  the  rooted  dislike  which  the  French  have  to  foreign 
words  and  idioms.  It  is  only  in  cases  of  the  direst  neces- 
sit}'  that  they  consent  to  borrow  from  their  neighbors, 
whether  in  perjide  Angleterre    or    elsewhere.     Even  wher> 


GRAND   WORDS.  127 

they  deign  to  adopt  a  new  woi'd,  they  so  disguise  it  that 
the  parent  language  would  not  know  it  again.  They  strip 
it  gradually  of  its  foreign  dress,  and  make  it  assume  the 
costume  of  the  countr}'.  "Beefsteak"  is  turned  into  hif- 
teck;  "  plum- pudding"  is  metamorphosed  into  poudhig  dc 
plomh;  "partner"  becomes  partenaire;  "riding-coat"  be- 
comes rcditifjote;  and  now  fashionable  English  tailors  adver- 
tise these  "  redingote.s,"  never  for  a  moment  dreaming 
that  they  are  borrowing  an  expression  which  the  f'rench 
stole  from  the  English.  It  was  their  contempt  for  tlie 
practice  of  borrowing  foreign  words  that  enabled  the 
Greeks  to  preserve  their  native  tongue  so  long  in  its 
purity;  while  on  the  conti"ary,  by  an  affectation  in  the 
Romans  of  Greek  words  and  idioms,  the  Latin  language 
was  not  only  corrupted,  but  lost  in  a  few  centuries  much 
of  the  beauty  and  majesty  it  had  in  the  Augustan  age. 

It  is  said  that  the  Spaniards,  in  all  ages,  have  been 
distinguished  for  their  love  of  long  and  high-flown  names, 
—  the  sounding  brass  and  tinkling  cymbal  of  appellative 
glory  and  honor.  In  looking  at  the  long  string  of  titles 
fastened  like  tlie  tail  of  a  kite  to  the  name  of  some  Don 
or  other  grandee,  one  is  puzzled  to  tell  whether  it  is  the 
man  that  belongs  to  the  name,  or  the  name  to  the  man. 
There  is  nothing  odd,  therefore,  in  the  conduct  of  that 
Spaniard,  who,  whenever  his  name  was  mentioned,  always 
took  off  his  hat  in  token  of  respect  to  himself, —  that  is,  as 
the  possessor  of  so  many  appellations.  A  person  of  high 
diplomatic  talent,  with  tlie  unpretending  and  rather  ple- 
beian name  of  "  IJubb,"  was  once  nominated  to  represent 
Great  Britain  at  Madrid.  Lord  Chesterfield  was  then  a 
minister  of  state,  and  on  seeing  the  newly  appointed  min- 
ister  remarked, — "  My  dear  fellow,  your  name  will  damn 


128  WOKDS;    THEIK   USE   AND   ABUSE. 

you  with  the  Spaniards;  a  one-sylhible  patronymic  will 
infallibly  disgust  the  grandees  of  that  hyperljolic  nation." 
"  What  shall  I  do?"'  said  Bubb.  "Oh,  that  is  easily  man- 
aged," rejoined  the  peer;  "'get  yourself  dubbed,  before 
you  start  on  your  mission,  as  Don  Vaco  y  Hijo  Hermoso 
y  Toro  y  Sill  y  Bubb,  and  on  your  arrival  you  will  have 
all  the  Spanish  Court  at  your  feet." 

The  effort  of  the  Spaniards  to  support  their  dignity  by 
long  and  sounding  titles  is  repeated  daily,  in  a  slightly 
different  form,  by  many  democratic  Americans,  Writers 
and  speakers  are  constantly  striving  to  compensate  for 
poverty  of  thought  by  a  multitude  of  words.  Magnilo- 
quent terms,  sounding  sentences,  unexpected  and  startling 
phrases,  are  dropped  from  pen  and  tongue,  as  gaudy  and 
high-colored  goods  are  displayed  in  shop  windows,  to  at- 
tract attention.  "  Ruskin,"  says  an  intelligent  writer, 
"  long  ago  cried  out  against  the  stuccoed  lies  which  rear 
their  unblushing  fronts  on  so  many  street  corners,  sham- 
ing our  civilization,  and  exerting  their  whole  influence  to 
make  us  false  and  pretentious.  Mrs.  Stowe  and  others 
have  warned  us  against  the  silken  lies  that,  frizzled, 
flounced,  padded,  compressed,  lily- whitened  and  rouged, 
flit  about  our  drawing  rooms  by  gaslight,  making  us 
familiar  with  sham  and  shoddy,  and  luring  us  away  from 
real  and  modest  worth.  Let  there  be  added  to  these  com- 
plaints the  strongest  denunciation  of  the  kindred  literary 
lies  which  hum  about  our  ears  and  glitter  before  our  eyes, 
which  corrupt  the  language,  and  wrong  every  man  and 
woman  who  speaks  it  by  robbing  it  of  some  portion  of 
its  beauty  and  power." 

When  shall  we  learn  that  the  secret  of  beauty  and  of 
force,  in  speaking    and   in   writing,  is  not   to  say  simple 


GRAND    -SVORDS.  129 

tilings  finely,  but  to  say  fine  things  as  simply  as  possible? 
"  To  clothe,"  says  Fuller,  "  low  creeping  matter  with  high- 
flown  language  is  not  fine  fancy,  but  flat  foolery.  It 
rather  loads  than  raises  a  wren  to  fasten  the  feathers  of 
an  ostrich  to  her  wings."  It  is  a  significant  fact  that  tlio 
books  over  which  generation  after  generation  of  readers 
has  hung  with  the  deepest  delight, —  which  have  retained 
their  hold,  amid  all  the  fluctuations  of  taste,  upon  all 
classes, —  have  been  written  in  the  simplest  and  most 
idiomatic  English,  that  English  for  which  the  "fine  school" 
of  writers  would  substitute  a  verbose  and  affected  phrase- 
ology. Such  books  are  "  Robinson  Crusoe,"  "  Gulliver's 
Travels,"  and  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  which  Macaulay  has 
justly  characterized  as  treasures  of  pure  English.  Fitz- 
Greene  Halleck  tells  us  that  some  years  ago  a  letter  fell 
into  his  hands  which  a  Scotch  servant  girl  had  written  to 
her  lover.  The  style  charmed  him,  and  his  literary  friends 
agreed  that  it  was  fairly  inimitable.  Anxious  to  clear  up 
the  mystery  of  its  beauty,  and  even  elegance,  he  searched 
for  its  author,  who  thus  solved  the  enigma:  "Sir,  I  came 
to  this  country  four  years  ago.  Then  I  did  not  know  how 
to  read  or  write.  Since  then  I  have  learned  to  read  and 
v^rite,  but  I  have  not  yet  learned  how  to  spell;  so  always 
when  I  sit  down  to  write  a  letter,  I  choose  those  words 
which  are  so  short  and  simple  that  I  am  sure  to  know 
bow  to  spell  them."  This  was  the  whole  secret.  The 
simple-minded  Scotch  girl  knew  more  of  ruetoric  than 
Blair  or  Campbell.  As  Halleck  forcibly  says:  "Simplicity 
is  beauty.     Simplicity  is  power." 

It  is  through  the  arts  and  sciences,  whose  progress  is 
so  rapid,  that  many  words  of  "  learned  length  and  thun- 
dering  sound "    force    their    way    in    these    days    into   the 


i;}0  woiiDs;  Tiii:iii  use  and  abl'sk. 

language.  The  vocabulary  of  science  is  so  repugnant  to 
the  ear  and  so  hard  to  the  tongue,  that  it  is  a  long  while 
before  its  terms  become  popularized.  We  may  be  sure  that 
many  years  will  elapse  before  "  aristoloehioid,"  "  megalo- 
saurus,"  "acanthopterygian,"  "nothoclajna-trichomanoides," 
"  inonopleurobranchian,"'  "  anonaceo  -  hydrocharideo  -  nym- 
phaeoid,"  and  other  such  "  huge  verbal  blocks,  masses  of 
syllabic  aggregations,  which  both  the  tongue  and  the  taste 
find  it  difficult  to  surmount,"  will  establish  themselves  in 
the  language  of  literature  and  common  life.  Still,  while 
the  lover  of  Anglo-Saxon  simplicity  is  rarely  shocked  by 
such  terms,  there  are  hundreds  of  others,  less  stupen- 
dous, such  as  ''phenomenon,"  "demonstrative,"  "inverse 
proportion,"  "transcendental,"  "category,"  "predicament," 
"  exorbitant,"  which,  once  heard  only  in  scientific  lecture 
rooms  or  in  schools,  are  now  the  common  currenc}'  of  the 
educated;  and  it  is  said  that  in  one  of  ovir  Eastern  col- 
leges, the  learned  mathematical  professor,  on  whom  the 
duty  devolved  one  morning  of  making  the  chapel  prayer, 
startled  his  hearers  by  asking  Divine  Goodness  to  enable 
them  to  know  its  length,  its  breadth,  and  its  superficial 
contents.  Should  popular  enlightenment  go  on  for  some 
ages  with  the  prodigious  strides  it  has  lately  made,  a 
future  generation  may  hear  lovers  addressing  their  mis- 
tresses in  the  terms  predicted  by  Punch: 

"  I  love  thee,  Mary,  and  thou  lovcst  me. 
Our  mutual  flame  is  like  the  affinity 
That  doth  exist  between  two  simple  bodies. 
I  am  Potassium  to  thine  Oxygen. 
.  .  .  Sweet,  thy  name  is  Briggs, 
And  mine  is  Johnson.    Wherefore  should  not  we 
Agree  to  form  a  Johnsonate  of  Briggs? 
We  will.    The  day,  the  happy  day  is  nigh, 
When  Johnson  shall  with  beauteous  Briggs  combine." 


GRAXD    AVORDS.  131 

It  is  useless,  of  course,  to  complain  of  the  tertninolotry 
of  science,  since  inaccurate  names,  that  connote  too  iiianv 
things,  or  that  are  otherwise  lacking  in  precision,  would  be 
productive  of  continual  mischief.  But  indispensable  as 
this  distinctive  nomenclature  is,  it  is,  no  doubt,  often 
needlessly  uncouth,  and  it  has  been  well  said  that  if  the 
language  of  common  life  were  equally  invariable  and 
unelastic,  imagination  w^ould  be  cancelled,  and  genius 
crushed.  How  barbarous  and  repulsive  appear  man}'  of 
the  long,  polysyllabic,  technical  names  of  plants  and  flowers 
in  our  treatises  on  botany,  when  compared  with  such 
popular  names  as  "  Stag-beetle,"  "  Rosemary,"  and  "  For- 
get-me-not!" To  express  the  results  of  science  without 
the  ostentation  of  its  terms,  is  an  admirable  art,  known, 
unfortunately,  to  but  few.  How  few  surgeons  can  com- 
municate in  simple,  intelligible  language  to  a  jury,  in  a 
law  case,  the  results  of  a  jjost-inortem  examination!  Al- 
most invariably  the  learned  witness  finds  a  wound  "  in  the 
parieties  of  the  abdomen,  opening  the  peritoneal  cavity"; 
or  an  injury  of  some  "  vertebra  in  the  dorsal  or  lumbar 
region";  or  something  else  equally  frightful.  Some  3'ears 
ago,  in  one  of  the  English  courts,  a  judge  rebuked  a  wit- 
ness of  this  kind  by  saying,  "  You  mean  so  and  so,  do  you 
not,  sir?"  —  at  the  same  time  translating  his  scientific 
barbarisms  into  a  few  words  of  simple  English.  "  I  do, 
my  Lord."  "Then  why  can't  you  sa// so?"  He  had  said 
so,  but  in  a  foreign  tongue. 

To  all  the  writers  und  speakers  who  needlessly  employ 
grandiose  or  abstract  terms,  instead  of  plain  Saxon  ones, 
we  would  say,  as  Falstaff  said  to  Pistol:  "If  thou  hast 
any  tidings  whatever  to  deliver,  prithee  deliver  them  like 
a    man    of    this    world!"     Never,    perhaps,    did    a   college 


132  WORDS;    THKIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

professor  give  a  better  lesson  in  rhetoric  than  was  given 
by  a  plain  fanner  in  Kennebec  County,  Maine,  to  a  school- 
master. "You  are  excavating  a  subterranean  channel,  it 
seems,"  said  the  pedagogue,  as  he  saw  the  farmer  at  w-ork 
near  his  house.  "No,  sir,"  was  the  reply,  "I  am  only 
digging  a  ditch."  A  similar  rebuke  was  once  administered 
by  the  witty  Governor  Corwin,  of  Ohio,  to  a  young  lady 
who  addressed  him  in  high-flown  terms.  During  a  polit- 
ical tour  through  the  State,  he  and  the  Hon.  Thomas 
Evving  stayed  at  night  at  the  house  of  a  leading  politi- 
cian, but  found  no  one  at  home  but  his  niece,  who  pre- 
sided at  the  tea-table.  Having  never  conversed  with 
"  great  men "  before,  she  supposed  she  must  talk  to  them 
in  elephantine  language.  "Mr.  Ewing,  will  you  take 
condiments  in  your  tea,  sir?"  inquired  the  young  lady. 
"  Yes,  miss,  if  you  please,"  replied  the  Senator.  Corwin's 
eyes  twinkled.  Here  was  a  temptation  that  could  not  be 
resisted.  Gratified  at  the  apparent  success  of  her  trial 
in  talking  to  the  United  States  Senator,  the  young  lady 
addressed  Mr.  Corwin  in  the  same  manner, — "  Will  you 
take  condiments  in  your  tea,  sir?"  "Pepper  and  salt, 
but  no  mustard,"  was  the  prompt  reply,  which  the  lady, 
it  is  said,  never  forgave,  declaring  that  the  Governor  was 
"  horridly  vulgar." 

The  faults  of  all  those  who  thus  barbarize  our  tongue 
would  be  comparatively  excusable,  were  it  so  barren  of 
resources  that  any  man  whose  conceptions  are  clear  need 
find  difficulty  in  wreaking  them  upon  expression.  But  the 
language  in  which  Chaucer,  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Words- 
worth, and  Tennyson  have  sung;  in  which  Hume,  Gibbon, 
Froude,  Motley,  and  Prescott  have  narrated;  in  which 
Addison,  Swift,  Newman,  and  Ruskin  have  written;  and  in 


GRAND    WORDS.  133 

which  Bolingbroke,  Chatham,  Fox,  Pitt,  and  Webster  have 
spoken,  needs  not  to  ask  alms  of  its  neighbors.  Not  only 
these,  but  a  hundred  otlier  masters,  have  shown  that  it 
is  rich  enough  for  all  the  exigencies  of  the  human  mind; 
that  it  can  express  the  loftiest  conceptions  of  the  poet, 
portray  the  deepest  emotions  of  the  human  heart  ;  that 
it  can  convey,  if  not  the  fripperies,  at  least  the  manly 
courtesies  of  polite  life,  and  make  palpable  the  profound- 
est  researches  of  the  philosopher.  It  is  not,  therefore, 
because  of  the  poverty  of  our  vocabulary  that  so  many 
writers  Gallicize  and  Germanize  our  tongue;  the  real 
cause  is  hinted  at  in  the  answer  of  Handel  to  an  ambitious 
musician,  who  attributed  the  hisses  of  his  hearers  to  a 
defect  in  the  instrument  on  which  he  was  playing:  "The 
fault  is  not  there,  my  friend,"  said  the  composer,  jealous 
of  the  honor  of  the  organ,  on  which  he  himself  performed; 
"  the  fact  is,  you  have  no  music  in  your  soul.'''' 

We  are  awai-e  that  the  English  tongue, —  our  own 
cartilaginous  tongue,  as  some  one  has  quaintly  styled  it, — 
has  been  decried,  even  by  poets  who  have  made  it  discourse 
the  sweetest  music,  for  its  lack  of  expressive  terms,  and 
for  its  excess  in  consonants,  guttural,  sibilant,  or  mute. 
It  was  this  latter  peculiarity,  doubtless,  which  led  Charles 
V,  three  centuries  ago,  to  compare  it  to  the  whistling  of 
birds;  and  others  since,  from  the  predominance  of  the  s, 
to  the  continued  hissing  of  red-hot  iron  in  water.  Madame 
de  Stael  likens  it  to  the  monotonous  sound  of  the  surge 
breaking  on  the  sea-shore;  and  even  Lord  Byron, —  whose 
own  burning  verse,  distinguished  not  less  by  its  melody 
than  by  its  incomparable  energy,  has  signally  revealed 
the  hidden  harmony  that  lies  in  our  short  Saxon  words, — 


134  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

turns  traitor  to  his  native  language,  and  in  a  moment  of 
caprice  denounces  it  for  its  harshness: 

"I  love  tlie  language,  that  soft  bastard  Latin, 

Which  melts  like  kisses  from  a  female  mouth,     '       . 

And  sounds  as  if  it  should  be  writ  on  satin. 

With  syllables  that  breathe  of  the  sweet  South, 

And  gentle  liquids,  gliding  all  so  pat  in. 
That  not  a  single  accent  seems  uncouth, 

Like  our  harsh.  Northern,  whistling,  grunting  guttural. 

Which  we're  obliged  to  hiss,  and  spit,  and  sputter  all." 

It  is  strange  that  the  poet  could  not  see  that,  in  this  veiy 
selection  of  condemnatory  terms,  he  has  strikingly  shown 
the  wondrous  expressiveness  of  the  tongue  he  censures. 
What  can  be  softer,  more  musical,  or  more  beautifully 
descriptive,  than  the  "  gentle  liquids  gliding,"  and  the 
words  "breathe  of  the  sweet  South";  and  where  among 
all  the  languages  of  the  "  sweet  South "  would  he  have 
found  words  so  well  fitted  to  point  his  sai'casm,  so  satur- 
ated with  hai'shness,  as  the  terms  "  harsh,"  "  uncouth," 
"northern,"  "whistling,"  "  grunting,"  "guttural,"  "hiss," 
"spit,"  and  "sputter?"  It  has  been  well  said  that  "the 
hand  that  possesses  strength  and  power  may  have  as  delicate 
a  touch,  when  needed,  as  the  hand  of  nervous  debility. 
The  English  language  can  drop  the  honeyed  words  of  peace 
and  gentleness,  and  it  can  visit  with  its  withering,  scathing, 
burning,  blasting  curse."  Again,  even  Addison,  who  wrote 
so  musical  English,  contrasting  our  own  tongue  with  the 
vocal  beauty  of  the  Greek,  and  forgetting  that  the  latter 
is  the  very  lowest  merit  of  a  language,  being  merely  its 
sensuous  merit,  calls  it  brick  as  against  marble.  Waller, 
too,  ungrateful  to  the  noble  tongue  that  has  preserved  his 
name,  declares  that 

"  Poets  that  lasting  marble  seek, 
JIust  carve  in  Latin  or  iu  Greek." 


GRAND    WORDS.  135 

Because  smoothness  is  one  of  the  requisites  of  verse,  it  has 
been  hastily  concluded  that  languages  in  which  vowels  ami 
liquids  predominate  must  be  better  adapted  to  poetry,  and 
that  the  most  mellifluous  must  also  be  the  most  melodious. 
But  so  far  is  this  from  being  true,  that,  as  Henry  Taylor 
has  remarked,  in  dramatic  verse  our  English  combinations 
of  consonants  are  invaluable,  both  in  giving  e.xpression 
to  the  harsher  passions,  and  in  irapai'ting  keenness  and 
significancy  to  the  language  of  discrimination,  and  espe- 
cially to  that  of  scorn. 

The  truth  is,  our  language,  so  far  from  being  harsh, 
or  poor  and  limited  in  its  vocabulary,  is  the  richest  and 
most  copious  now  spoken  on  the  globe.  As  Sir  Thomas 
More  long  ago  declared:  "It  is  plenteous  enough  to  ex- 
presse  our  myndes  in  anythinge  whereof  one  man  hath 
used  to  speak  with  another."  Owing  to  its  composite 
character,  it  has  a  choice  of  terms  expressive  of  every 
shade  of  difference  in  the  idea,  compared  with  which  the 
vocabulary  of  many  other  modern  tongues  is  poverty  itself. 
But  for  the  impiety  of  the  act,  those  who  speak  it  might 
well  raise  a  monument  to  the  madcaps  who  undertook  the 
tower  of  Babel;  for,  as  the  mixture  of  many  bloods  has 
made  them  the  most  vigorous  of  modern  races,  so  has  the 
mingling  of  divers  tongues  given  them  a  lanffuage  which 
is  one  of  the  noblest  vehicles  of  thought  ever  vouchsafed 
to  man.  This  very  mingling  of  tongues  in  our  language 
has  been  made  the  ground  of  an  accusation  against  it; 
and  the  Anglo-Saxon  is  sometimes  told  by  foreigners  that 
he  "has  been  at  a  great  feast  of  languages  and  stolen  the 
scraps";  that  his  dialect  is  "the  alms-basket  of  wit,"  made 
up  of  beggarly  borrowings,  and  is  wholly  lacking  in 
originality. 


13G  AVORDs;  Tiir.iit  use  and  abuse. 

It  is  true  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  has  pillaged  largely 
from  the  speech  of  other  peoples;  that  he  has  a  craving 
desire  to  annex,  not  only  states  and  provinces,  even  whole 
empires,  to  his  own,  but  even  the  best  parts  of  their  lan- 
guages; that  there  is  scarce  a  tongue  on  the  globe  which 
his  absorbing  genius  has  not  laid  under  contribution  to 
enrich  the  exchequer  of  his  all-conquering  speech.  Strip 
him  of  his  borrowings, —  or  "annexations,"  if  you  will, — 
and  he  would  neither  have  a  foot  of  soil  to  stand  upon, 
nor  a  rag  of  language  in  which  to  clothe  his  shivering 
ideas.  To  say  nothing  of  the  Gi'eek,  Latin,  and  French, 
which  enter  so  largely  into  the  woof  of  the  tongue,  we  are 
indebted  to  the  Italian,  Spanish,  Portuguese,  Dutch,  Ara- 
bic, Hebrew,  Hindoo,  and  even  the  North  American  Indian 
dialects,  for  many  words  which  we  cannot  do  without. 
The  word-barks  of  our  language  are  daily  increasing  in 
size,  and  terms  that  sprang  up  at  Delhi  and  Benares  four 
thousand  years  ago  are  to-day  scaling  the  clitTs  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains.  But  while  the  English  has  thus  bor- 
rowed largely  from  other  tongues,  and  the  multifarious 
etymology  of  "  its  Babylonish  vocabulary,"  as  its  enemies 
are  pleased  to  call  it,  renders  it,  of  all  modern  languages, 
one  of  the  most  difficult  to  master  in  all  its  wealth  and 
power,  yet  it  makes  up  in  eclecticism,  vigor,  and  abun- 
dance far  more  than  it  loses  in  apparent  originality. 
Mosaic-like  and  heterogeneous  as  are  its  materials,  it  is 
yet  no  mingle-mangle  or  patchwork,  but  is  as  individual 
as  the  French  or  the  German.  Though  the  rough  mate- 
rials are  gathei-ed  from  a  hundred  sources,  yet  such  is  its 
digestive  and  assimilative  energy  that  the  most  discordant 
aliments,  passing  through  its  anaconda-like  stomach,  are 
as  speedily  identified  with    its  own  independent  existence 


GRAXD    WORDS.  137 

as  the  beefsteak  which  yesterday  gave  roundness  to  the 
hinder  symmetry  of  a  prize  ox  becomes  to-morrow  part 
and  parcel  of  the  proper  substance, —  the  bi-east,  leg,  or 
arm, —  of  an  Illinois  farmer. 

In  fact  the  very  caprices  and  irregularities  of  our 
idiom,  orthography,  and  pronunciation,  which  make  for- 
eigners "  stare  and  gasp,"  and  are  ridiculed  by  our  own 
philological  ultraists,  are  the  strongest  proofs  of  the  noble- 
ness and  perfection  of  our  language.  It  is  the  very  extent 
to  which  these  caprices,  peculiar  idioms,  and  exceptions 
prevail  in  any  tongue,  that  forms  the  true  scale  of  its 
worth  and  beauty;  and  hence  we  find  them  more  numerous 
in  Greek  than  in  Latin, —  in  Trench  or  Italian  than  in 
Irish  or  Indian.  There  is  less  symmetry  in  the  rugged, 
gnarled  oak,  with  the  grotesque  contortions  of  its  branches, 
which  has  defied  the  storms  of  a  thousand  years,  than  in 
the  smoothly  clipped  Dutch  yew  tree;  but  it  is  from  the 
former  that  we  hew  out  the  knees  of  mighty  line-of-battle 
ships,  while  a  vessel  built  of  the  latter  would  go  to  pieces 
in  the  first  storm.  It  was  our  own  English  that  sustained 
him  who  soared  "above  all  Greek,  above  all  Roman  fame"; 
and  the  same  "  well  of  English  undefiled"  did  not  fail  the 
myriad-minded  dramatist,  when 

"Each  scene  of  many  colored  life  he  drew, 
Exhausted  worlds,  and  then  imagined  new." 

Nor  have  even  these  great  writers,  marvellous  and  varied 
as  is  their  excellence,  fathomed  the  powers  of  the  language 
for  grand  and  harmonious  expression,  or  used  them  to  the 
full.  It  has  "  combinations  of  sound  grander  than  ever 
rolled  through  the  mind  of  Milton;  more  awful  than  the 
mad  gasps  of  Lear;  sweeter  than  the  sighs  of  Desdemona; 
more  stirring  than  the  speech  of  Antony;  sadder  than  the 


138  words;   their  use  and  aijuse. 

plaints  of  Hamlet;  merrier  than  the  mocks  of  Falstaff." 
To  those,  therefore,  who  complain  of  the  poverty  or  harsh- 
ness of  our  tongue,  we  may  say,  in  the  words  of  George 
Herbert: 

"  Let  foreign  nations  of  their  language  boast, 
What  fine  variety  eacli  tongue  affords; 
I  like  our  language,  as  our  men  and  coast: — 

Who  cannot  dress  it  well,  want  wit,  not  words.". 


CHAPTER  IV. 


SMALL   WORDS. 


It  is  with  words  as  with  sunbeams, —  the  more  they  are  condeneed,  the 
deeper  they  burn.— Southey. 

Language  is  like  the  minim  immortal  among  the  infusoria,  which  keeps 
splitting  itself  into  halves. —  Coleridge. 

AMONG  the  various  forms  of  ingratitude,  one  of  the 
■^  -^  commonest  is  that  of  kicking  down  the  ladder  by 
which  one  has  climbed  the  steeps  of  celebrity;  and  a  good 
illustration  of  this  is  the  conduct  of  the  author  of  the 
following  lines,  who,  though  indebted  in  no  small  degree 
for  his  fame  to  the  small  words,  the  m.onosyllabic  music 
of  our  tongue,  sneers  at  them  as  low: 

"While  feeble  expletives  their  aid  do  join, 
And  ten  low  words  oft  creep  in  one  dull  line." 

"  How  ingenious!  how  felicitous!"  the  reader  exclaims;  and, 
truly.  Pope  has  shown  himself  wonderfully  adroit  in  ridi- 
culing the  Saxon  part  of  the  language  with  words  bor- 
rowed from  its  own  vocabulary.  But  let  no  man  despise 
little  words,  even  though  he  echo  the  little  wasp  of  Twick- 
enham. Alexander  Pope  is  a  high  authority  in  English 
literature;  but  it  is  long  since  he  was  regarded  as  having 
the  infallibility  of  a  Pope  Alexander.  The  multitude  of 
passages  in  his  works,  in  which  the  small  words  form  not 
only  the  bolts,  pins,  and  hinges,  but  the  chief  material  in 
the  structure  of  hi.s  verse,  show  that  he  knew  well  enongli 
their  value;  but  it  was  hard  to  avoid  the  temptation  of 
such  a  line  as  that  quoted.     "  Small  words,"  he  elsewhere 

139 


140  AVORDS;    THEIR    VHE    AND    ABUSE. 

says,  "  are  generally  stiff  and  languishing,  but  ihey  may 
be  beautiful  to  express  melancholy."     It  is  the  old  story  of 

" the  ladder 

Whereto  the  climber  upward  turns  his  face, 
But  when  he  once  attains  the  utmost  round, 
He  then  unto  the  ladder  turns  his  back. 
Looks  in  the  clouds,  scorning  the  base  degrees 
By  which  he  did  ascend." 

The  truth  is,  the  words  most  potent  in  life  and  liter- 
ature,—  in  the  mart,  in  the  senate,  in  the  forum,  and  at 
the  fireside, —  are  small  words,  the  monosyllables  which 
the  half-educated  speaker  and  writer  despises.  All  pas- 
sionate expression, —  the  outpouring  of  the  soul  when 
moved  to  its  depths, —  is,  for  the  most  part,  in  monosyl- 
lables. They  are  the  heart-beats,  the  very  throbs  of  the 
brain,  made  visible  •  by  utterance.  The  will  makes  its 
giant  victory  strokes  in  little  monosyllables,  deciding  for 
the  right  and  against  the  wrong.  In  the  hour  of  fierce 
temptation,  at  the  ballot-box,  in  the  court-room,  in  all 
the  crises  of  life,  how  potent  for  good  or  evil  are  the  little 
monosyllables,  "Yes"  and  "No"!  "'Yes'  is  the  Olympian 
nod  of  approval  which  fills  heaven  with  ambrosia  and 
light;  'no'  is  the  stamp  of  Jupiter  which  shakes  heaven 
and  darkens  the  faces  of  the  gods.  '  Yes: '  how  it  trembles 
from  the  maiden's  lips,  the  broken  utterance,  the  key- 
syllable  of  a  divine  song  which  her  heax't  only  sings;  how 
it  echoes  in  the  ecstatic  pulses  of  the  doubtful  lover,  and 
makes  Paradise  open  its  gates  for  the  royal  entry  of  the 
triumphing  conqueror.  Love.  'No,' — well  might  Miles 
Standish  say  that  he  could  not  stand  fire  if  '  No '  should 
come  'point-blank  from  the  mouth  of  a  woman':  what 
'captain,  colonel  or  knight-at-arms '  could?  'No':  'tis  the 
impregnable  fortress, —  the  very  Malakoff  of   the  will;    it 


SMALL    WORDS.  141 

is  the  breastwork  and  barrier  thrown  up,  which  the 
charge  must  be  fierce  indeed  to  batter  down  or  overleap. 
It  is  the  grand  and  guarded  tower  against  temptation;  it 
is  the  fierce  and  sudden  arrow  through  all  the  rings,  that 
dismays  the  suitors  of  the  dear  and  long-cherished  and 
faithful  Penelope,  and  makes  the  unforgotten  king  start 
from  the  disguise  of  a  beggar." 

Again,  there  is  a  whole  class  of  words,  and  those 
among  the  most  expressive  in  tlie  language,  of  which  the 
great  majority  are  monosyllables.  We  refer  to  the  inter- 
jections. We  are  aware  that  some  philologists  deny  that 
interjections  are  language.  Home  Tooke  sneers  at  this 
whole  class  of  words  as  "  brutish  and  inarticulate,"  as 
"  the  miserable  refuge  of  the  speechless,"  and  complains 
that,  "  because  beautiful  and  gaudy,"  they  have  been 
suffered  to  usurp  a  place  among  words.  "  Where  will 
you  look  for  it"  (ilie  interjection),  he  trinmpliantl}'  asks; 
"  will  you  find  it  among  laws,  or  in  books  of  civil  insti- 
tutions, in  history,  or  in  any  ti'eatise  of  useful  arts  or 
sciences?  No:  you  must  seek  for  it  in  rhetoric  and 
poetry,  in  novels,  plays  and  romances."  This  acute  writer 
has  forgotten  one  book  in  which  interjections  abound, 
and  awaken  in  the  mind  emotions  of  the  highest  gran- 
deur and  pathos, —  namely,  the  Bible.  But  the  use  of  thio 
part  of  speech  is  not  confined  to  books.  It  is  heard 
wherever  men  inteii'hange  thought  and  feeling,  whether 
on  the  gravest  or  the  most  trivial  Ibemes;  in  tones  of 
the  tenderest  love  and  of  the  deadliest  hate;  in  shouts  of 
joy  and  ecstasies  of  rapture,  and  in  the  expression  of 
deep  anguish,  remorse  and  despair;  in  short,  in  the  out- 
burst of  every  human  feeling.  More  than  this,  not  or)}' 
is  it  heard  in  daily   lilV,  Init  we  are  told  by  the  high«.-:;t 


142  WORDS;   THEIR   USE   AND   ABUSE 

authority  that  it  is  heard  in  the  hallelujahs  of  angels, 
and  in  the  continual  "Holy!  Holy!  Holy!"  of  the  cher- 
ubim. 

What  word  in  the  English  language  is  fuller  of  sig- 
nificance, has  a  greater  variety  of  meanings,  than  the 
diminutive  "Oh"?  Uttered  by  the  infant  to  express  surprise 
or  delight,  it  is  used  by  the  man  to  indicate  fear,  aspira- 
tion or  appeal,  and,  indeed,  according  to  the  tone  in  which 
it  is  uttered,  may  voice  almost  any  one  of  the  emotions 
of  which  he  is  capable.  What  a  volume  of  meaning  is 
condensed  in  the  derisive  "Oh!  oh!"  which  greets  a  silly 
utterance  in  the  House  of  Commons!  In  no  other  assem- 
bly, perhaps,  are  the  powers  of  hviman  speech  more  fully 
exhibited;  yet  it  was  in  that  body  that  one  of  the  most 
famous  of  interjections  originated, —  we  mean  the  cry  of 
"Hear!  hear!"  which,  though  at  first  an  imperative  verb, 
is  now  "  nothing  more  or  less  than  a  great  historical 
interjection,"  indicating,  according  to  the  tone  in  which 
it  is  uttered,  admiration,  acquiescence,  indignation  or 
derision.  It  has  been  truly  said  that  when  a  large  assem- 
bly is  animated  by  a  common  sentiment  which  demands 
instantaneous  utterance,  it  can  find  that  utterance  only 
through  interjections. 

Again,  how  many  exquisite  passages  in  poetry  owe  to 
the  interjection  their  beauty,  their  pathos,  or  their  power! 
"The  first  sincere  hymn,"  sa3's  M.  Taine,  "is  the  one  word 
'0.'"  This  "0,"  the  sign  of  the  vocative,  must  not  be 
confounded  with  "Oh!"  the  emotional  interjection,  which 
expresses  a  sentiment,  as  of  appeal,  entreaty,  expostulation, 
etc.  What  depth  of  meaning  is  contained  in  that  little 
word,  as  an  expression  of  grief,  in  the  following  lines  by 
Wordsworth: 


SMALL    WOKDS.  143 

"She  lived  unknown,  and  few  could  know 
When  Lucy  ceased  to  be  I 
Now  she  is  in  her  grave, —  and  oh  I 
The  difEerence  to  me." 

What  possible  combination  of  words  could  be  more 
significant  than  the  reply  "Pooh!  pooh!"  to  a  contro- 
versialist's theory,  or  the  contemptuous  "Fudge!"  with 
which  Mr.  Churchill,  in  "  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield,"  sums 
up  the  pretensions  of  the  languishing  Miss  Carolina 
Wilhelmina  Amelia  Skeggs: 

"Virtue,  my  dear  Lady  Blarnry,  virtue  is  worth  any  price;  but  where  i» 
that  to  be  found?'' 
"  Fudge ! " 

How  full  of  pathos  is  the  "Alack,  alack!"  of  Jeanie  Deans 
at  the  supreme  moment  in  her  sister's  trial;  and  how 
forcibly  "Oho!"  expresses  exasperating  self-felicitation  at 
the  discovery  of  a  carefully  guarded  secret!  What  vol- 
umes of  meaning  are  sometimes  condensed  into  the  little 
word  "pslia"!  "Doubt,"  says  Thackeray,  "is  always  crying 
'  psha,'  and  sneering."  How  expressive  are  those  almost 
infinitesimal  words  which  epitomize  the  alternations  of  hu- 
man life,  "ah!"  and  "ha!"  As  Fuller  beautifully  moralizes: 
"'Ha!'  is  the  interjection  of  laughter;  'ah!'  is  an  interjec- 
tion of  sorrow.  The  diiference  between  them  is  very  small 
as  consisting  only  in  the  transposition  of  what  is  no  sub- 
stantial letter,  but  a  bare  aspiration.  How  quickly,  in 
the  age  of  a  minute,  in  the  very  turning  of  our  breath, 
is  our  mirth  changed  to  mourning!" 

"Nature  in  many  tones  complains, 
Has  many  sounds  to  tell  her  pains; 
But  for  hor  joys  has  only  thri'c. 
And  those  hut  small  ones,  Hal  ha  I  hoi" 

The  trulli  is  that,  so  far  is  this  class  of  words  from 
being,  as  jMax  MilUer  contends,  the  mere  oiifaliirts  of  lan- 
guage, they  arc  more  truly  words  tiiaii  any  others.     Tliese 


lU  words;  their  use  and  auuse. 

liille  words,  so  expressive  of  joy,  of  hope,  of  doubt,  of  fear, 
which  leap  from  the  heart  like  fiery  jets  from  volcanic 
isles, —  these  surviving  particles  of  the  ante-Babel  tongues, 
which  spring  with  the  flush  or  blanching  of  the  face  to 
all  lips,  and  are  understood  by  all  men, —  these  "silver 
fragments  of  a  broken  voice,"  to  use  an  expression  of 
Tennyson's,  "  the  only  remains  of  the  Eden  lexicon  in  the 
dictionaries  of  all  races," — 

"  The  only  words 
Of  Paradise  that  have  survived  the  fall,"— 

are  emphatically  and  preeminently  language.  It  is  doubt- 
less true  that  civilization,  with  its  freezing  formalities, 
tends  to  diminish  the  use  of  interjections,  as  well  as  their 
natural  accompaniments,  gesture  and  gesticulation;  but  on 
the  other  hand,  it  should  be  noted,  that  there  are  certain 
interjections  which  are  the  fruits  of  the  highest  and  most 
mature  forms  of  human  culture.  Interjections,  in  truth, 
are  not  so  much  "jxtrfs  of  speech"  as  entire  expressions 
of  feeling  or  thought.  They  are  preeminently  pictorial.  If 
I  pronounce  the  words  "house,"  "strike,"  "black,"  "beauti- 
fully," without  other  words  or  explanatory  gestures,  I  say 
nothing  distinctly;  I  may  mean  any  one  of  a  hundred  things; 
but  if  I  utter  an  interjectional  exclamation,  denoting  joy  or 
sorrow,  surprise  or  fear,  every  person  Avho  hears  me  knov/s 
at  once  by  what  affection  I  am  moved.  I  communicate 
a  fact  by  a  single  syllable.  Instead  of  i-anking  below 
other  words,  the  interjection  stands  on  a  higher  plane, 
because  its  significance  is  more  absolute  and  immediate. 
Moreover,  from  these  despised  parts  of  speech  has  been 
derived  a  whole  class  of  words:  as,  for  example,  in  the 
natural  interjection  "ah"!  ach  !  we  have  the  root  of  a 
large  class  of  words  in  the  Aryan  languages,  such  as  ^^^"?, 


SMALL    WORDS.  145 

achon!  "ache,"  "anguish,"  "anxious,"  anyiistus,  and  the 
word  "agony"  itself.  Many  words  are  used  interjection- 
ally  which  are  not  interjections,  such  as  "Farewell!" 
"Adieu!"  "Welcome!"  which  are  to  be  looked  upon  as 
elliptical  forms  of  expression.  They  are,  in  fact,  abbre- 
viated sentences,  resembling  the  0  for  oo,  "not,"  with 
which  the  poet  Philoxenus  is  said  to  have  replied  in 
writing  to  the  tyrant  Dionysius  who  had  invited  him  to 
the  court  of  Syracuse.  The  true  interjection  is  an  apos- 
trophe, condensed  into  a  syllable.  It  is  the  effort  of  Natui-e 
to  unburden  herself  of  some  intense,  pressing  emotion. 
It  is  the  sigh  of  humanity  for  what  it  cannot  have  or 
hope  for;  for  what  it  has  lost;  for  what  it  did  not  value 
till  it  lost  it.  George  Eliot  thus  defines  it  when  she  speaks 
of  certain  deeds  as  "little  more  than  interjections,  which 
give  vent  to  the  long  passion  of  a  life."  In  oratory,  poetry, 
and  the  drama,  the  interjection  plays  an  important  part. 
Public  speakers,  especiall}^  find  it  indispensable  to  their 
success.  "As  the  most  eloquent  men  are  apt  to  find  their 
language  inadequate  to  their  needs, —  as  still,  after  they 
have  exhausted  their  vocabulary  of  other  words, 

'  There  hover  in  these  restless  heads 
One  thought,  one  grace,  one  wonder,  at  the  best. 
Which  into  worda  no  virtue  can  digest,' 

they  find  great  need  of  the  interjection.  In  their  hands 
it  deepens  all  assertions,  gives  utterance  to  intense  long- 
ings, carries  the  hearer  away  into  ultimate  possibilities, 
and  expresses  the  most  passionate  emotions  in  the  instant 
of  their  most  overwhelming  power."  Who  that  is  familiar 
with  the  history  of  oratory,  does  not  remember  instances 
when  these  little  words,  so  despised  by  grammarians,  have 
been  more  impressive,  morfi  to  the  point,  more  eloquent 
than  a  lon^-  speech?     The  interjections  of  Wliitelield, —  his 


146  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

"Ah!"  of  pity  for  the  unrepentant  sinner,  and  his  "Oh!"  of 
encouragement  and  persuasion  for  the  almost  converted 
listener, —  were  words  of  tremendous  power,  and  formed 
a  most  potent  engine  in  his  pulpit  artillery.*  Garrick 
used  to  say  that  he  would  give  a  hundred  guineas  if  he 
could  say  "  Oh ! "  as  Whitefield  did.  The  condensed  force 
of  interjections, —  their  inherent  expressiveness, —  entitles 
them,  therefore,  to  be  regarded  as  the  appropriate  lan- 
guage, the  mother-tongue  of  passion;  and  hence  the 
effect  of  good  acting  depends  largely  on  the  proper  intro- 
duction and  just  articulation  of  this  class  of  woi'ds. 

Shakespeare's  interjections  exact  a  rare  command  of 
modulation,  and  cannot  be  rendered  with  any  truth  except 
by  one  who  has  mastered  the  whole  play.  What  a  pro- 
found insight  of  the  masterpiece  of  the  poet  is  required  of 
him  who  would  adequately  utter  the  word  "  indeed  "  in  the 
following  passage  of  Othello!  "It  contains  in  it,"  says  an 
English  writer,  "  the  gist  of  the  chief  action  of  the  play, 
and  it  implies  all  that  the  plot  develops.  It  ought  to  be 
spoken  with  such  an  intonation  as  to  suggest  the  diabolic 
scheme  of  lago's  conduct.  There  is  no  thought  of  the 
grammatical  structure  of  the  compound,  consisting  of  the 
preposition  'in'  and  the  substantive  'deed,'  which  is  equi- 
valent to  '  act,'  '  fact,'  or  '  reality.'  All  this  vanishes  and 
is  lost  in  the  mere  iambic  dissyllable  which  is  employed 
as  a  vehicle  for  the  feigned  tones  of  surprise." 

"/agio.     I  did  not  think  he  had  been  acqiuunted  with  her. 
0th.     O,  yes,  jind  wont  between  u?  very  oft. 
laQo.    Indeed  I 

Olh.    Indeed?  ay,  indeed.    Discern'st  thou  aiight  in  tliat?    Is  he  not  honest? 
lago.    Honest,  my  lord? 
0th.    Honest?  ay,  honest!'" 

♦"Lectures  on  tlie  English  Language,"  by  G.  P.  Marsh. 


SMALL    WORDS.  147 

The  Greek  and  Latin  languages  abound  with  interjec- 
tions, which  are  used  by  the  orators  and  poets  with  great 
effect.  To  gratify  the  Athenians,  as  they  behold  their 
once  proud  enemy  liuiiibled  to  the  dust,  and  draining  the 
cup  of  affliction  to  the  very  last  dregs,  ^schylus,  in  his 
"  Persai,"  employs  almost  every  form  of  ejaculation  in 
which  abject  misery  can  be  expressed. 

The  English  language  is  preeminently  a  language  of 
small  words.  It  has  more  monosyllables  than  any  other 
modern  tongue,  a  peculiarity  which  gives  it  a  strikingly 
direct  and  straightforward  character,  equally  removed 
fi'om  the  indirect  French  and  the  intricate,  lumbering  Ger- 
man. Its  fondness  for  this  class  of  words  is  even  greater 
than  that  of  the  Anglo-Saxon.  Not  a  few  of  our  present 
monosyllables,  such  as  the  verbs  "  to  love,"  "  bake," 
"  beat,"  "  slide,"  "  swim,"  "  bind,"  "  blow,"  "  brew,"  were, 
in  the  Anglo-Saxon,  dissyllables.  The  English  language, 
impatient  of  all  superfluities,  cuts  down  its  woi'ds  to  the 
narrowest  possible  limits, —  lopping  and  condensing,  never 
expanding.  Sometimes  it  cuts  off  an  initial  syllable,  as  in 
"  gin  "  for  "  engine,"  "  van  "  for  "  caravan,"  "  prentice  " 
for  "  apprentice,"  "  'bus  "  for  "  omnibus,"  "  wig  "  for  "  per- 
iwig"; sometimes  it  cuts  off  a  final  syllable  or  syllables,  as 
in  "aid"  for  "aidedecamp,"  "prim"  for  "primitive,"  "cit" 
for  "citizen,"  "grog"  for  "grogram,"  "pants"  for  "pan- 
taloons," "tick"  for  (pawnbroker's)  "ticket";  sometimes 
it  strikes  out  a  letter,  or  letters,  from  the  middle  of  a 
word,  or  otherwise  contracts  it,  as  in  "  last "  for  "  latest," 
"lark"  for  "laverock,"  "since"  for  "  sithence,"  "fort- 
night" for  "  fourteen  nights,"  "  lord  "  for  "  hlaford," 
"  morning  "  for  "  morrowning,"  "  sent "  for  "  sended," 
"chirp"    for    "chirrup"  or  "cheer  up,"  "fag"  for  "fa- 


148  WORDS;    THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

tigv.e,"  "f^nntnic"  for  "consolidated  annuities."  The 
same  abbreviating  processes  are  followed,  when  English 
words  are  borrowed  from  the  Latin.  Thus  we  have  the 
monosyllable  "  strange "  from  the  trisyllable  extraneus; 
"spend"  from  expendo;  "scour"  from  crscorio;  "stop" 
from  obstipo;  "  funnel "  from  uifu)idihi(Jnm ;  "  ply  "  from 
plico;  "jetty"  from  project  nin;  "  dean  '  from  decanus; 
"count"  from  compiito;  "stray"  from  cxdaiyigiis; 
"proxy"  from  procmrtfor;  "spell"  from  sijUahare,  etc. 
Not  only .  are  single  Latin  words  thus  maimed  when 
converted  into  English,  and  their  letters  changed,  trans- 
posed, or  omitted,  but  often  two  English  words  are  clip- 
ped and  squeezed  into  one  word.  Thus  from  "  proud " 
and  "dance"  we  have  "prance";  from  "grave"  and 
"rough"  we  have  "gruff";  from  "scrip"  and  "roll" 
comes  "scroll";  from  "tread,"  or  "trot,"  and  "drudge," 
we  have  "  trudge."  Even  in  the  construction  of  its  primi- 
tive monosyllables  the  English  language  manifests  the 
same  economy,  and  forms  words  of  a  totally  different 
meaning  by  the  simple  change  of  a  vowel;  as,  bag,  beg, 
big,  bog,  bug;  bat,  bet,  bit,  bot,  but;  ball,  bell,  bill,  boll, 
bull;  or,  again,  by  the  change  of  the  first  letter;  as,  fight, 
light,  might,  night,  right,  tight, —  dash,  hash,  lash,  gash, 
rash,  sash,  wash.  The  final  "  ed "  of  our  participles  is 
rapidly  disappearing,  as  a  distinct  syllable.  Not  con- 
tent with  suppressing  half  the  lettei's  of  our  syllables, 
and  half  the  syllables  of  our  words,  we  clip  our  vowels, 
in  speaking,  shorter  than  any  other  people,  so  that  our 
language  threatens  to  become  a  kind  of  stenology,  or 
algebraic  condensation  of  thought, —  a  pemmican  of  ideas. 
Voltaire  said  that  the  English  gained  two  hours  a  day  by 
clipping  their  words.     The  same  love  of  brevity  has  shown 


SMALL    WOUDS.  1  IJ 

itself  in  rendering  the  final  e  in  English  always  mute.  In 
Chaucer  the  final  e  must  often  be  sounded  as  a  separate 
syllable,  or  the  verse  will  limp.  To  the  same  cause  we 
owe  such  expressions  as  "ten  o'clock,"  instead  of  "0/  the 
clock,"  or  "  on  the  clock,"'  and  the  hissing  «,  so  oft'ensive  to 
foreign  ears.  The  old  termination  of  the  verb,  <//.,  has  given 
way  to  .s'  in  the  third  person  singular,  and  en  to  a  single 
letter  in  the  third  person  plural. 

The  Anglo-Saxon,  the  substratum  of  our  modern  Eng- 
lish, is  emphatically  monosyllabic;  yet  many  of  the 
grandest  passages  in  our  literature  are  made  up  almost 
exclusively  of  Saxon  words.  The  English  Bible  abounds 
in  grand,  sublime,  and  tender  passages,  couched  almost 
entirely  in  words  of  one  syllable.  The  passage  in  Ezekiel, 
which  Coleridge  is  said  to  have  considered  the  sublimest 
in  the  whole  Bible:  "And  lie  said  unto  me,  son  of  man, 
can  these  bones  live?  And  I  answered,  0  Lord  God,  thou 
knowest," — contains  seventeen  monosyllables  to  three 
others.  What  passage  in  Holy  Writ  surpasses  in  ener- 
getic brevity  that  which  describes  the  death  of  Sisera, — 
"At  her  feet  he  bowed,  he  fell;  at  her  feet  he  bowed,  he 
fell,  he  lay  down;  where  he  bowed,  there  he  fell  down 
dead"?  Here  are  twenty-two  monosyllables  to  one  dis- 
syllable thrice  repeated,  and  that  a  word  which  is  usually 
pronounced  as  a  monosyllable.  The  lament  of  David  over 
Saul  and  Jonathan  is  not  surpassed  in  pathos  by  any  sim- 
ilar passage  in  the  whole  range  of  literature;  yet  a  very 
large  proportion  of  these  touching  words  arc  of  one  or 
two  syllables: — "The  beauty  of  Israel  is  slain  upon  the 
high  places;  how  are  the  mighty  fallen!  .  .  Ye  mountains 
of  Gilboa,  let  there  be  no  dew,  neither  let  there  be  rain 
upon  you,  nor  fields  of  offerings.  .  .     Saul  and  Jonathan 


150  AVORDs;   TiiEiK  usf:  and  abuse. 

were  lovely  and  pleasant  in  their  lives,  and  in  their  death 
they  were  not  divided.  .  .  They  were  swifter  than  eagles, 
they  were  stronger  than  lions.  .  .  How  are  the  mighty 
fallen  in  the  midst  of  the  battle!  0  Jonathan,  thou  wast 
slain  in  thine  high  places.  I  am  distressed  for  thee,  my 
brother  Jonathan:  very  pleasant  hast  thou  been  unto  me: 
thy  love  to  me  was  wonderful,  passing  the  love  of  women." 
Occasionally  a  long  word  is  used  in  the  current  version, 
where  a  more  vivid  or  picturesque  short  one  might  have 
been  employed,  as  where  our  Saviour  exclaims:  "Oh,  ye 
generation  of  vipers,  who  hath  warned  you  to  flee  from 
the  wrath  to  come?"  In  one  of  the  older  versions 
"brood"  is  used  in  place  of  "generation,"  with  far  greater 
effect. 

The  early  writers,  the  "  pure  wells  of  English  unde- 
filed,"  abound  in  small  words.  Shakespeare  employs  them 
in  his  finest  passages,  especially  when  he  would  paint  a 
scene  with  a  few  masterly  touches.     Hear  Macbeth: 

"  Here  lay  Duncan, 
His  silver  skin  laced  with  his  golden  hlood ; 
And  his  gash'd  stabs  look'd  like  a  breach  in  Nature 
For  ruin's  wasteful  entrance.    There  the  murderers, 
Steep'd  in  the  colors  of  their  trade,  their  daggers 
Unmannerly  breech'd  with  gore." 

Are  monosyllables  passionless?  Listen,  again,  to  the 
"  Thane  of  Cawdor  " : 

"That  is  a  step 
On  which  I  must  fall  down,  or  else  o'erleap. 
For  in  my  way  it  lies.    Stars,  hide  your  fires, 
Let  not  light  see  my  black  and  deep  desires. 
The  eye  winks  at  the  hand.    Yet,  let  that  be 
Which  the  eye  fears,  when  it  is  done,  to  see." 

Two  dissyllables  only  among   fifty-two  words! 

Bishop  Hall,  in  one  of  his  most  powerful  satires,  speak- 


SMALL    WORDS.  151 

ing  of  the  vanity  of  "  adding  house  to  hou.se  and  field  to 
field,"  has  these  beautiful  lines: 

"Fond  fool!  six  feet  shall  serve  for  all  thy  store, 
And  he  that  cares  for  most  shall  find  no  more." 

"What  harmonious  monosyllables!"  exclaims  the  critic, 
Gifford;  yet  they  may  be  paralleled  by  others  in  the  same 
writer,  equally  musical  and  equally  expressive. 

Was  Milton  tame?  He  knew  when  to  use  polysylla- 
bles of  "learned  length  and  thundering  sound";  but  he 
knew  also  when  to  produce  the  grandest  effects  by  the 
small  words  despised  by  inferior  artists.  Read  his  account 
of  the  journey  of  the  fallen  angels: 

"Through  many  a  dark  and  dreary  vale 
They  passed,  and  many  a  region  dolorous, 
O'er  many  a  frozen,  many  a  fiery  Alp, 
Rocks,  caves,  lakes,  fens,  bogs,  detis,  and  shades  of  deal h, — 
A  universe  of  death." 

In  what  other  language  shall  we  find  in  the  same 
number  of  words  a  more  vivid  picture  of  desolation  than 
this?  Hear,  again,  the  lost  archangel  calling  u[)on  hell 
to  receive  its  new  possessor: 

"One  who  brings 
A  mind  not  to  be  changed  by  place  or  time. 
The  mind  is  its  own  place,  and  in  itself 
Can  make  a  heaven  of  hell,  a  hell  of  heaven. 
What  matter  where,  if  I  be  still  the  same. 
And  what  I  should  be  — all  but  less  than  He 
Whom  thunder  hath  made  greater?    Here,  at  least, 
We  shall  be  free;  the  Almighty  hath  not  built 
Here  for  His  envy;  will  not  drive  us  hence; 
Here  we  may  reign  secure,  and,  in  my  choice. 
To  reign  is  worth  ambition,  though  in  hell; 
Better  to  reign  in  hell,  than  serve  in  heaven." 

Did  Collins  lack  lyric  beauty,  grace,  or  power?  Read 
the  following  exquisite  lines,  in  which  tlie  truth  of  the 
sentiment  that  "poetry  is  the  short-hund  of  thought" 
is  strikingly  illustrated: 


152  Nvoui'S;  TiiEiu  use  axd  abuse. 

"IIow  sleep  the  brave  who  sink  lo  rest 
By  all  their  eomitry's  wislics  bh'st! 
When  Spring,  with  dewy  fingers  cold, 
Returns  to  deck  their  hallow'd  mould, 
She  there  shall  dress  a  sweeter  sod 
Than  Fancy's  feet  have  ever  trod. 

By  fairy  hands  their  knell  is  rung. 

By  forms  unseen  their  dirge  is  sung; 

There  Honor  conies,  a  pilgrim  gray,  : 

To  bless  the  turf  tliat  wraps  their  clay; 

And  Freedom  shall  a  while  repair. 

To  dwell  a  weeping  hermit  there." 

Where,  in  the  whole  range  of  English  poetry,  shall  we 
find  anything  more  perfect  than  these  lines?  What  a 
quantity  and  variety  of  thought  are  here  condensed  into 
two  verses,  like  a  cluster  of  rock  crystals,  sparkling  and 
distinct,  yet  receiving  and  reflecting  lustre  by  the  com- 
bination! Poetry  and  picture,  pathos  and  fancy,  grandeur 
and  simplicity,  are  combined  in  verse,  the  melody  of  which 
has  never  been  surpassed.  Yet,  out  of  the  seventy-nine 
words  in  these  lines,  sixty-two  are  mon.syllables. 

Did  Byron  lack  force  or  fire?  His  skilful  use  of  mono- 
syllables is  often  the  very  secret  of  his  charm.  It  is  true 
that  he  too  frequently  resorts  to  quaint,  obsolete,  and  out- 
landish terms,  thinking  thereby  to  render  his  style  more 
gorgeous  or  grand.  But  his  chief  strength  lies  in  his 
despotic  command  over  the  simplest  forms  of  speech. 
Listen  to  the  words  in  which  he  describes  the  destruction 
of  Sennacherib: 

"For  the  Angel  of  Death  spread  his  wings  on  the  blast. 
And  breathed  in  the  face  of  the  foe  as  he  passed; 
And  the  eyes  of  the  sleepers  wax'd  deadly  and  chill. 
And  their  hearts  beat  but  once,  and  forever  lay  still." 

Here,  out  of  forty-two  words,  all  but  four  are  mono- 
syllables; and  yet  how  exquisitely  are  all  these  monosylla- 
bles linked   into  the  majestic  and  animated   movement  of 


SMALL   AVORDS.  153 

the  anapestic  measure!  Again,  what  can  be  more  musical 
and  more  melancholy  than  the  opening  verse  of  the  lines 
in  which  the  same  poet  bids  adieu  to  his  native  land? 

"Adieu  I   adieu!   my  native  shore 
Fades  o'er  tlie  waters  blue, 
The  ni<^ht-\vind8  sigh,  the  brealiers  roar, 
And  shrielvs  the  wild  sea-mew. 

Yon  sun  that   sets  upon  the  sea 

We  follow  in  his  llight; 
Farewell  awhile  to  him  and  thee, 

My  native  land,  good  night  1 

With  thee,  my  bark,  I'll  swiftly  go 

Athwart  the  foaming  brine; 
Nor  care  what  land  thou  bear'st  me  to, 

So  not  again  to  mine. 

Welcome,  welcome,  ye  dark  blue  waves 

And  when  you  fail  my  sight, 
Welcome,  ye  deserts  and  3'e  caves  1 

My  native  land,  good  night  1" 

Two  Latin  words,  "native"  and  "desert";  one  French, 
"adieu";  the  rest,  English  purely.  The  third  and  fourth 
lines  paint  the  scene  to  the  life;  yet  all  the  words  but  one 
are  monosyllables. 

How  graceful,  tender,  thoughtful,  and  melancholy,  are 
the  following  lines  by  Moore,  of  which  the  monosyllabic 
music  is  one  of  the  principal  charms: 

'•Those  evenin;;  bells!  those  evening  bells! 
IIow  many  a  talc  their  music  tells. 
Of  youth  and  home,  and  that  sweet  time, 
When  last  I  hcaril  their  soothing  chime. 

Those  joyous  hours  have  passed  away; 
And  nuiuy  a  heart,  that  then  was  gay, 
Within  the  tomb  now  darkly  dwells, 
And  hears  no  more  those  evening  bells. 

And  so  'twill  be  wlun  I  am  gone; 
That  tuneful  pcai  will  still  ring  on, 
While  other  bards  shall  walk  those  dells. 
And  sing  your  praise,  sweet  evening  bells  I" 


lo-i  words;  ttieir  use  and  abuse. 

The  following  brief  passage  from  one  of  Lander's  poems 
strikingly  illustrates  the  metrical  effect  of  simple  words  of 
one  syllable: 

"  She  was  sent  forth 
To  bring  that  light  wliich  never  wintry  blast 
Blows  out,  nor  rain,  nor  snow  extinguishes  — 
The  light  that  shines  from  loving  eyes  upon 
Eyes  that  love  back,  till  they  can  see  no  more." 

Here,  out  of  thirty  different  words,  but  one  is  a  long  one; 
nearly  all  the  rest  are  monosyllables. 

Herbert  Spencer,  in  an  able  paper  on  the  "  Philosophy 
of  Style,"  has  pointed  out  the  superior  forcibleness  of 
Saxon-English  to  Latin-English,  and  shown  that  it  is  due 
largely  to  the  compai'ative  brevity  of  the  Saxon.  If  a 
thought  gains  in  energy  in  proportion  as  it  is  expressed  in 
fewer  words,  it  must  also  gain  in  energy  in  proportion 
as  the  words  in  which  it  is  expressed  have  fewer  syllables. 
If  surplus  articulations  fatigue  the  hearer,  distract  his 
attention,  and  diminish  the  strength  of  the  impression 
made  upon  him,  it  matters  not  whether  they  consist  of 
entire  words  or  of  parts  of  words.  "  Formerly,''  says  an 
able  writer,  "  when  armies  engaged  in  battle,  they  were 
drawn  up  in  one  long  line,  fighting  from  flank  to  flank; 
but  a  great  general  broke  up  this  heavy  mass  into  several 
files,  so  that  he  could  bend  his  front  at  will,  bring  any 
troops  he  chose  into  action,  and,  even  after  the  first  on- 
slaught, change  the  whole  order  of  the  field;  and  though 
such  a  broken  line  might  not  have  pleased  an  old  sol- 
dier's eye,  as  having  a  look  of  weakness  about  it,  still  it 
carried  the  day,  and  is  everywhere  now  the  arrangement. 
There  will  thus  be  an  advantage,  the  advantage  of  sup- 
pleness, in  having  the  parts  of  a  word  to  a  certain  degree 
kept    by    themselves;    this,    indeed,    is   the    way    with   all 


SMALL   WORDS.  155 

languages  as  they  become  more  refined;  and  so  far  are 
monosyllabic  languages  from  being  lame  and  ungainly, 
that  such  are  the  sweetest  and  gracefulest,  as  those  of 
A^ia;  and  the  most  rough  and  untamed  (those  of  North 
America)  abound  in  huge  unkempt  words, — 3'ardlongtailed, 
like  fiends." 

I  have  spoken  in  the  previous  chapter  of  Johnson's 
Hmdness  for  big,  swelling  words,  the  leviathans  of  the 
lexicon,  and  also  of  certain  speakei's  and  writers  in  our 
own  day,  who  have  an  equal  contempt  for  small  words, 
and  never  use  one  when  they  can  find  a  pompous  poly- 
syllable to  take  its  place.  It  is  evident  from  the  passages 
I  have  cited,  that-  these  Liliputians, —  these  Tom  Thumbs 
of  the  dictionary, —  play  as  important  a  part  in  our  liter- 
ature as  their  bigger  and  more  magnilo(j[uent  brethren. 
Home  Tooke  admitted  their  force,  when,  on  his  trial  for 
high  treason,  he  said  that  he  was  "  the  miserable  victim 
of  two  prepositions  and  a  conjunction."  Like  the  infuso- 
ria of  our  globe,  so  long  unnoticed,  which  are  now  known 
to  have  raised  whole  continents  from  the  depths  of  the 
ocean,  these  words,  once  so  despised,  are  now  rising  in 
importance,  and  are  admitted  by  scholars  to  form  an  im- 
portant class  in  the  great  family  of  words. 

The  class  of  small  words  which  were  once  contempt- 
uously called  "particles,"  are  now  acknowledged  to  be  Ihe 
very  bolts,  pins,  and  hinges  of  the  structure  of  language. 
Their  significance  increases  just  in  the  degree  that  a  nation 
thinks  acutely  and  expresses  its  thought  accurately.  An 
uncultivated  idiom  can  do  without  them;  but  as  soon  as 
a  people  becomes  thoughtful,  and  wishes  to  connect  and 
modify  its  id<Ms, —  in  short,  to  pursue  metaphysical  in- 
quiries, and  to  reason  logically, —  the  inicrosco[)ic  parts  of 


]56  -words;  their  use  and  aruse. 

f^peech  become  indispensable.  In  some  kinds  of  writing 
♦he  almost  exclusive  use  of  small  words  is  necessary. 
IVhat  would  have  been  the  fate  of  Bunyan's  immortal 
book,  had  he  told  the  story  of  the  Pilgrim's  journey  in  the 
ponderous,  elephantine  "osities"  and  "  ations  "  of  Johnson, 
or  the  gorgeous  Latinity  of  Taylor?  It  would  have  been 
like  building  a  boat  out  of  timbers  cut  out  for  a  ship.  It 
is  owing  to  this  grandiose  style,  as  much  as  to  any  other 
cause,  that  the  author  of  the  "Rambler,"  in  spite  of  his 
sturdy  sti-ength  and  grasp  of  mind,  "lies  like  an  Egyptian 
king,  buried  and  forgotten  in  the  pyramid  of  his  fame." 
When  a  man  half  understands  the  subject  of  which  he 
speaks  or  writes,  he  will,  like  Goldsmith's  schoolmaster, 
use  words  of  "  learned  length  and  thundering  sound." 
But  when  he  is  master  of  his  theme,  and  when  he  feels 
deeply,  he  will  use  short,  plain  words  which  all  can  under- 
stand. Rage  and  fear,  it  has  been  happily  said,  strike 
out  their  terms  like  the  sharp  crack  of  the  rifle  when  it 
sends  its  bullets  straight  to  the  point.*  When,  after  wea- 
rily waiting  in  Chesterfield's  ante-room,  Johnson  wrote  his 
indignant  letter,  he  broke  away,  to  a  considei*able  extent, 
from  his  usual  elephantine  style,  and  used  short,  sharp, 
and  stinging  terms. 

In  conclusion,  when  we  remember  that  the  Saxon  lan- 
guage, the  soul  of  the  English,  is  essentially  monosyllabic; 
that  our  language  contains,  of  monosyllables  formed  by 
the  vowel  a  alone,  more  than  five  hundred  ;  by  the  vowel 
e,  some  four  hundred  and  fifty;  by  the  vowel  /,  about  four 
hundred;  by  the  vowel  o,  over  four  hundred;  and  by  the 
vowel  ?<,  more  than  two  hundred  and  fifty;  we  must  admit 
that  these  seemingly  petty  and    insignificant  words,  even 

*"The  L'se  of  Short  Words,"  by  Hon.  Horatio  Seymour. 


SMALL    WORDS.  157 

the  microscopic  particles,  so  far  from  meriting  to  be  treated 
as  "creepex'S,"  are  of  high  importance,  and  that  to  know- 
when  and  how  to  use  them  is  of  no  less  moment  to  the 
speaker  or  writer  than  to  know  when  to  use  the  gran- 
diloquent expressions  which  we  have  borrowed  from  the 
language  of  Greece  and  Rome.  To  every  man  who  has 
occasion  to  teach  or  move  his  fellow-men  by  tongue  or 
pen,  I  would  say  in  the  words  of  Dr.  Addison  Alexander, — 
themselves  a  happy  example  of  the  thing  he  commends: 

"Think  not  that  strength  lies  in  the  big  round  word. 

Or  that  the  brief  and  phiin  must  needs  be  weak. 
To  whom  can  this  be  true  who  once  has  heard 

The  cry  for  help,  the  tongue  tliat  all  men  speak 
When  want  or  woe  or  fear  is  in  the  throat, 

So  that  each  word  gasped  out  is  like  a  shriek 
Pressed  from  the  sore  heart,  or  a  strange,  wild  note 

Sung  by  some  fay  or  fiend?    There  is  a  strength 
Which  dies  if  stretched  too  far  or  spun  too  flue, 

Which  has  more  height  than  breadth,  more  depth  tliau  length; 
Let  but  this  force  of  thouglit  and  speech  be  min<'. 

And  he  that  will  may  take  the  sleek,  fat  i)hrase, 
Which  glows  and  burns  not.  though  it  gleam  and  shine, — 

Light,  but  no  heat— a  flash,  but  not  a  blaze! 
Nor  is  it  mere  strength  that  the  short  word  boasts; 

It  serves  of  more  than  fight  or  storm  to  tell. 
The  roar  of  waves  that  clash  on  rock-bound  coasts. 

The  crash  of  tall  trees  when  the  wild  winds  swell, 
The  roar  of  guns,  the  groans  of  men  that  die 

On  blood-stained  fields.    It  has  a  voice  as  well 
For  them  that  far  off  on  their  sick  beds  lie; 

VoT  them  that  weep,  for  them  that  mourn  the  dead; 
For  them  that  laugh,  and  dance,  and  clap  their  hand; 

To  joy"s  quick  step,  as  well  jis  griefs  slow  tread.       ~ 
The  sweet,  i)lain  words  we  learned  at  first  kee))  time; 

And  though  the  theme  be  sad,  or  gay,  or  grand. 
With  each,  with  all,  these  may  be  made  to  chime. 

In  thought,  or  speech,  or  song,  iu  prose  or  rhyme." 


CHAPTER   V. 

WORDS   WITHOUT   MEANING. 

PoLOKius.  What  do  you  read,  my  Lord? 
Hamlet.     Words,  words,  words. — Suakespeare. 

Is  not  cant  the  materia  prima  of  the  Devil,  from  which  all  falpchoods, 
imbecilities,  abominations,  body  themselves;  from  which  no  true  thing  can 
come?  For  cant  is  itself  properly  a  double-distilled  lie;  the  second  power  of 
a  lie.— Carlyle. 

Mankind  are  fond  of  inventing  certain  solemn  and  sounding  expressions 
which  appear  to  convey  much,  and  in  reality  mean  little;  words  that  are  the 
proxies  of  absent  thoughts,  and,  like  other  proxies,  add  nothing  to  argument, 
while  they  turn  the  scales  of  decision.— Shelley. 

SOME  years  ago  the  author  of  the  "  Biographical  His- 
tory of  Philosophy,"  in  a  criticism  of  a  certain  pub- 
lic lecturer  in  London,  observed  that  one  of  his  .  most 
marked  qualities  was  the  priceless  one  of  frankness.  "  He 
accepts  no  sham.  He  pretends  to  admire  nothing  he  does 
not  in  his  soul  admire.  He  pretends  to  he  nothing  that 
he  is  not.  Beethoven  bores  him,  and  he  says  so:  how 
many  are  as  wearied  as  he,  but  dare  not  confess  it?  Oh, 
if  men  would  but  recognize  the  virtue  of  intrepidity!  If 
men  would  but  cease  lying  in  traditionary  formulas, — 
pretending  to  admire,  pretending  to  believe,  and  all  in 
sheer  respectability ! " 

Who  does  not  admire  the  quality  here  commended,  and 
yet  what  quality,  in  this  age  of  self-assertion,  of  sounding 
brass  and  tinkling  cymbal,  is  more  rare?  What  an 
amount  of  insincerity  there  is  in  human  speech!  In  how 
few  persons  is  the  tongue  an  index  to  the  heart!  What 
a  meaningless  conventionality  pervades   all  the  forms  of 

158 


WORDS   WITHOUT    MEANING.  159 

social  intercourse!  Everybody  knows  that  "How  d'ye 
do?"  and  "Good  morning!"  are  parroted  in  most  cases 
without  a  thought  of  their  meaning,  or  at  least,  without 
any  positive  interest  in  the  health  or  prosperity  of  the 
person  addressed;  we  begin  a  letter  to  one  whom  wo 
secretly  detest  with  "  My  dear  sir,"  and  at  the  end  sub- 
scribe ourselves  his  "  obedient  servant,"  though  we  should 
resent  a  single  word  from  him  which  implied  a  belief  in 
our  sincerity,  or  bore  the  slightest  appearance  of  a  com- 
mand. But  not  to  dwell  upon  these  phrases,  the  hollo w- 
ness  of  which  may  be  excused  on  the  ground  that  they 
sweeten  human  intercourse,  and  prevent  the  roughest 
men  from  degenerating  into  absolute  boors,  it  is  yet 
startling  to  reflect  how  large  a  proportion  of  human 
speech  is  the  veriest  cant.  That  men  should  use  words 
the  meaning  of  which  they  have  never  weighed  or  dis- 
criminated, is  bad  enough;  but  that  they  should  habitu- 
ally use  words  as  mere  counters  or  forms,  is  certainly 
worse.  There  is  hardly  a  class,  a  society,  or  a  relation  in 
which  man  can  be  placed  towai;d  man,  that  does  not  call 
into  play  more  or  less  of  language  without  meaning. 
The  "  damnable  iteration  "  of  the  lawyer  in  a  declaration 
of  assault  and  battery  is  not  more  a  thing  of  form  than 
is  the  a^sevex-ation  of  one  petitioner  that  he  "  will  ever 
pray,"  etc.,  and  of  another  that  he  "  will  be  a  thousand 
times  obliged,"  if  you  will  grant  his  request.  Wlio  does 
not  know  to  what  an  amount  of  flummery  the  most  trifling 
kindness  done  by  one  person  to  another  often  gives  occa- 
sion on  both  sides?  The  one  racks  the  vocabulary  for 
words  and  phrases  in  which  to  express  his  pretended  grat- 
itude, while,  in  fact,  he  is  only  keenly  humiliated  by 
having  to  accept  a  favor,  and  the  other  as  eloquently  dis- 


KiU  WOKDS;    Til  KIR    USE   AND    AlJUriE. 

claiins  any  merit  in  the  grant,  which  he  really  grudged, 
and  will  never  think  of  without  feeling  that  he  made 
a  great  sacrifice. 

The  secret  feeling  of  many  a  "  public  benefactor," 
loudly  praised  by  the  newspapers,  was  finely  let  out  by 
Lord  Byron  when  he  sent  four  thousand  pounds  to  the 
Greeks,  and  privately  informed  a  friend  that  he  did  not 
think  he  could  well  get  off  for  less.  How  many  wedding 
and  other  presents,  and  subscriptions  to  testimonials  and 
to  public  enterprises,  are  made  by  those  who  secretly 
curse  the  occasion  that  exacts  them!  With  the  stereo- 
typed "thanks"  and  "grateful  acknowledgments"  of  the 
shopkeeper  all  are  familiar,  as  they  ai-e  with  "the  last," 
the  "positively  the  last,"  and  the  "most  positively  the 
very  last"  appearances  of  the  dramatic  stars  that  shine 
for  five  hundred  or  a  thousand  dollars  a  night.  As 
nobody  is  deceived  by  these  phrases,  it  seems  bypei-crit- 
ical  to  complain  of  them,  and  yet  one  can  hardly  help 
sympathizing  with  the  country  editor  who  scolds  a  cele- 
brated musician  because  he  is  now  making  farewell  tours 
"  once  a  year,"  whereas  formerly  he  made  them  "  only 
once  in  five  years."  Considering  the  sameness  of  shop- 
keepers' acknowledgments,  one  cannot  help  admiring  the 
daring  originality  of  the  Dutch  commercial  house  of  which 
the  poet  Moore  tells,  that  concluded  a  letter  thus:  "Sugars 
are  falling  more  and  more  every  day;  not  so  the  respect 
and  esteem  with  which  we  are  your  obedient  servants." 
The  cant  of  public  speakers  is  so  familiar  to  the  public 
that  it  is  looked  for  as  a  matter  of  course.  When  a  man 
is  called  on  to  address  a  public  meeting,  it  is  understood 
that  the  apology  for  his  "lack  of  preparation"  to  meet 
the    demand    so    "unexpectedly"    made    upon    him,     will 


WORDS    WITHOUT    MEANING.  161 

preface  the  "  impromptu "  which  he  has  spent  weeks  in 
elaborating,  as  surely  as  the  inevitable  "  This  is  so  unex- 
pected "  prefaces  the  reply  of  a  maiden  to  the  long- 
awaited  proposal  of  marriage  from  her  lover. 

Literary  men  are  so  wont  to  weigh  their  words  that 
cant  in  them  seems  inexcusable;  yet  where  shall  we  find 
more  of  it  than  in  books,  magazines,  and  newspapers? 
How  many  reasons  are  assigned  by  authors  for  inflicting 
their  works  on  the  public,  other  than  the  true  one, 
namely,  the  pleasure  of  writing,  the  hope  of  a  little 
distinction,  or  of  a  little  money!  How  many  writers  pro- 
fess to  welcome  criticism,  which  they  nevertheless  ascribe 
to  spite,  envy,  or  jealousy,  if  it  is  unfavorable!  What  is 
intrinsically  more  deceptive  than  the  multitudinous  "  we  " 
in  which  every  writer,  great  and  small,  hides  his  indi- 
viduality,—  whether  his  object  be,  as  Archdeacon  Hare 
says,  "  to  pass  himself  off  unnoticed,  like  the  Irishman's 
bad  guinea  in  a  handful  of  halfpence,"  or  to  give  to  the 
opinions  of  a  humble  individual   the  weight  and   gravity 

of  a  council?     "Who  the  is  'We'?"  exclaimed  the 

elder  Kean  on  reading  a  scathing  criticism  upon  his 
"Hamlet";  and  the  question  might  be  pertinently  asked 
of  many  other  uominis  unihire  who  deliver  their  vaticina- 
tions and  denunciations  as  oraculai'ly  as  if  they  were  lineal 
descendants  of  Minos  or  Rhadamanthus.  Who  can  esti- 
mate the  diminution  of  power  and  influence  that  would 
lesult  should  the  ten  thousand  editors  in  the  land,  who 
now  assume  a  mystic  grandeur  and  speak  with  a  voice 
of  authority,  as  the  organs  of  the  public  or  a  party, 
come  down  from  their  thrones,  and  exchange  the  regal 
"we"  for  the  plebeian  and  egotistic  "I"?  "  Who  is  'I'?" 
the   reader  might  exclaim,   in  tones   even    more   contempt- 


162  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

uous  than  Kean's.  The  truth  is,  "I"  is  a  nobody.  He 
represents  only  himself.  He  may  be  Smith  or  Jones, — 
the  merest  cipher.  He  may  weigh  but  a  hundred  pounds, 
and  still  less  morally  and  intellectually.  He  may  be 
diminutive  in  stature,  and  in  intellect  a  Tom  Thuml). 
Who  cares  what  such  a  pygmy  thinks?  But  "we"  repre- 
sents a  multitude,  an  imposing  crowd,  a  mighty  assembly, 
a  congress,  or  a  jury  of  sages;  and  we  all  quail  before 
the  opinions  of  the  great  "  we."  As  a  writer  has  well 
said:  "'We  have  every  reason  to  believe  that  beef  will 
rise  to  starvation  prices'  is  a  sentiment  which,  when 
read  in  a  newspaper,  will  make  the  stoutest  stomach 
tremble;  but  substitute  an  'I'  for  the  'we,'  and  nobody 
cares  a  copper  for  the  opinion.  It  has  been  well  said 
that  what  terrified  Belshazzar  was  the  hand  on  the  wall, 
because  he  couldn't  see  to  whom  it  belonged;  and  the 
same  may  be  said  of  the  editorial  '  we.'  It  is  the  mystery 
in  which  it  is  involved  that  invests  it  with  potenc}'." 

The  history  of  literature  abounds  with  examples  of 
words  used  almost  without  meaning  by  whole  classes  of 
writers.  There  is  a  time  in  the  history  of  almost  every 
literature  when  language  apparently  loses  its  vitality, 
and  becomes  dead,  by  being  divorced  from  the  living 
thought  that  created  it.  Many  of  the  most  effete  and 
worn-out  forms  of  expression,  when  first  introduced, 
pleased  by  their  novelty,  and  manifested  originality  in 
their  inventors;  but  by  dint  of  continual  repetition,  the 
delicate  bloom  has  been  rubbed  off,  and  they  have  lost 
their  power.  A  great  deal  of  what  is  preserved  in  books, 
and  is  called  fine  writing,  is  made  up  of  these  lifeless 
parts  of  langviage,  which  are  like  the  elements  of  a 
decayed  and   rotten   tree,  of  which   the  organic  form  and 


WORDS    WITHOUT    MEANING.  1G3 

structure  are  perfect,  but  the  life  of  which  has  departed. 
It  is  the  outward  form  of  literature  witiiout  the  soul;  an 
abundance  of  fine  writin<^f,  but  no  ideas.  It  has  been 
truly  said  that  it  is  amazing  to  see  how  much  of  this 
dead  material  is  accumulated  at  the  present  day;  whole 
books  filled  to  repletion  with  words  without  thoughts, 
standing  like  dead  forests,  upright  indeed,  and  regular 
in  form  and  structure,  but  presenting  no  fruit  nor 
verdure,  sheltering  no  life,  monuments  only  of  past 
vitality,  and  soon  to  crumble  into  oblivion.  "  Wander- 
ing through  these  catacombs  of  the  mind,  one  meets  every- 
where with  the  most  admirable  'styles,'  which,  doubtless, 
when  first  constructed,  were  the  vehicles  of  as  admirable 
thought,  the  fit  language  of  great  and  stately  minds,  but 
which,  transported  from  the  past,  and  made  to  represent 
the  little  and  despicable  'notions'  of  their  plunderers, 
become  a  very  mockery." 

Who  does  not  know  how  feeble  and  hollow  British 
poetry  had  become  in  the  eighteenth  century,  just  before 
the  appearance  of  Cowper?  Compelled  to  appear  in  the 
costume  of  the  court,  it  had  acquired  its  artificialit}';  and 
dealing  with  the  conventional  manners  and  outside  aspects 
of  men,  it  had  almost  forsaken  the  human  heart,  the  proper 
haunt  and  main  region  of  song.  Instead  of  being  the 
vehicle  of  lofty  and  noble  sentiments,  it  had  degenerated 
into  a  mere  trick  of  art, —  a  hand-organ  operation,  in 
which  one  man  could  grind  out  tunes  nearly  as  well  as 
another.  A  certain  monotonous  smoothness,  a  perpetually 
recurring  assortment  of  images,  had  become  so  much  the 
traditional  property  of  the  versifiers,  that  one  could  set 
himself  up  in  the  business  as  a  shopkeeper  might  supply 
himself  with  his  stock  in  trade.     The  style  that  prevailed 


164  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

has  been  aptly  termed  by  the  poet  Lowell  "  the  Dick 
Svviveller  style."  As  Dick  always  called  the  wine  "rosy," 
sleep  "  balmy,"  so  did  these  correct  gentlemen  always  em- 
ploy a  glib  epithet  or  a  diffuse  periphrasis  to  express  the 
commonest  ideas.  The  sun  was  never  called  by  his  plain, 
almanac  name,  but  always  "  Phoebus,"  or  "the  orb  of  day." 
The  moon  was  known  only  as  "  Cynthia,"  "  Diana,"  or  "  the 
refulgent  lamp  of  night."  Naiads  were  as  plenty  in  every 
stream  as  trout  or  pickerel.  If  these  poets  wished  to  say 
tea,  they  would  write 

"Of  China's  herb  the  infusion  hot  and  mild." 

Coffee  would  be  nothing  less  than 

"The  fragrant  juice  of  Mocha's  kernel  gray." 

A  boot  would  be  raised  to 

"The  shining  leather  that  the  leg  encased." 

A  wig  was  "  Alecto's  snaky  tresses";  a  pei'son  ti'aversing  St. 
Giles  was  "Theseus  threading  the  labyrinth  of  Ci'ete";  and 
a  magistrate  sitting  in  judgment  was  nothing  less  than 
"Minos"  or  "Rhadamanthus."  If  a  poet  wished  to  speak  of 
a  young  man's  falling  in  love,  he  set  himself  to  relate  how 
Cupid  laid  himself  in  ambush  in  the  lady's  eye,  and  from 
that  fortress  shot  forth  a  dart  at  the  breast  of  the  unhappy 
youth,  who  straightway  began  to  writhe  under  his  wound, 
and  found  no  ease  till  the  lady  was  pleased  to  smile  upon 
him.  All  women  in  that  golden  age  were  "nymphs"; 
"dryads"  were  as  common  as  birds;  carriages  were  "har- 
nessed pomps";  houses,  humble  or  stately  "piles";  and 
not  a  wind  could  blow,  whether  the  sweet  South,  or 
"  Boreas,  Cecias,  or  Argestes  loud,"  but  it  was  "  a  gentle 
zephyr."  Pope  satirized  this  conventional  language  in  the 
well  known  lines: 


WORDS    WITHOUT   MEANING.  165 

"While  they  ring  round  the  same  unvaried  chimes, 
Willi  sure  rctunis  of  still  expected  rhymes. 
Where'er  you  lind  'the  cooling  western  breeze,' 
In  the  next  line  '  it  whispers  through  the  trees ' ; 
If  crystal  streams  '  with  pleasing  murmurs  creep,' 
The  reader's  threatened,  not  in  vain,  with  'sleep.'" 

Yet  Pope  himself  was  addicted  to  these  circumlocutions 
and  to  threadbare  mythological  allusions,  quite  as  much 
as  the  small  wits  whom  he  ridiculed.  The  manly  genius 
of  Cowper  broke  through  these  traditionary  fetters,  and 
relieved  poetry  from  the  spell  in  which  Pope  and  his 
imitators  had  bound  its  phraseology  and  rhythm.  Ex- 
pressing his  contempt  for  the  "  creamy  smoothness "  of 
such  verse,  in  which  sentiment  was  so  often 


"Sacrificed  to  sound, 
And  truth  cut  short  to  make  a  period  round," 


he  cried; 


Give  me  the  line  that  ploughs  its  stately  course. 
Like  a  proud  swan,  conquering  the  stream  by  force; 
That,  like  some  cottage  beauty,  strikes  the  heart, 
Quite  unindebted  to  the  tricks  of  art." 

The  charm  of  Cowper's  letters,  acknowledged  by  all 
competent  judges  to  be  the  best  in  the  English  language, 
lies  in  the  simplicity  and  naturalness, —  the  freedom  from 
afl'ectation, —  by  which  they  are  uniformly  characterized. 
Contrasting  them  with  those  of  Wilberforce,  Dr.  Andrew 
Combe  observes  in  a  letter  to  a  friend:  "Cowper's  letters, 
to  my  mind,  do  far  more  to  excite  a  deep  sense  of  religion, 
than  all  the  labored  eftbrts  of  Wilberforce.  The  one  gives 
expression  simply  and  naturally  to  the  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings which  spring  up  spontaneously  as  he  writes.  The 
other  forces  in  the  one  topic  in  all  his  letters,  and  lashes 
himself  up  to  a  due  fervor  of  expression,  whether  the  mind 
wills    or  not.     On   one  occasion  Wilberforce  dispatched  a 


lOG  words;  tiikir  use  and  abtse. 

very  hurried  letter  on  Saturday  niglit,  without  any  reli- 
gious expressions  in  it.  In  the  night-time  his  conscience 
troubled  him  so  much  for  the  omission,  that  he  could  not 
rest  till  he  sat  down  next  morning  and  wrote  a  second  with 
the  piety,  and  apologizing  for  liis  involuntary  departure 
fi'om  his  rule!  Only  think  what  a  perversion  of  a  good 
principle  this  was!" 

It  is  in  the  conduct  of  political  affairs  that  the  class  of 
words  of  which  we  have  spoken  are  used  most  frequently. 
Sir  Henry  Wotton  long  since  defined  an  ambassador  as  '"a 
gentleman  sent  abroad  to  lie  for  the  benefit  of  his  country." 
In  Europe,  so  indissolubly  has  diplomacy  been  associated 
with  trickeiy,  that  it  is  said  Talleyrand's  wonderful  success 
with  the  representatives  of  foreign  courts  was  owing  largely 
to  his  frankness  and  fair  dealing,  nobody  believing  it  pos- 
sible that  he  w^as  striving  for  that  for  which  he  seemed  to 
be  striving.  The  plain,  open,  straightforward  way  in 
which  he  spoke  of  and  dealt  with  all  public  matters,  com- 
I^letely  puzzled  the  vulgar  minds,  that  could  not  dissociate 
from  diplomacy  the  mysterious  devices  that  distinguish  the 
hack  from  the  true  diplomatist.  In  the  titles  and  styles  of 
address  used  by  Kings  and  Emperors,  we  have  examples  of 
cant  in  its  most  meaningless  forms.  One  sovereign  is  His 
Most  Christian  Majesty;  another,  Defender  of  the  Faith,  etc. 
A  monarch,  forced  by  public  opinion  to  issue  a  commission 
of  inquiry,  addresses  all  the  members  of  it  as  his  "well- 
beloved,"   though  in  his  heart  he  detests  them. 

Everybody  knows  that  George  I  of  England  obtained 
his  crown,  not  by  hereditary  title,  but  by  an  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment; yet,  in  his  very  first  speech  to  that  body,  he  had  the 
effrontery  to  speak  of  ascending  the  throne  of  his  an- 
cestors.    Well  might  Henry  Luttrell  exclaim: 


WORDS    WITHOUT    MEANIXG.  167 

"O  that  in  England  there  might  be 
A  duty  on  hypocrisy  I 
A  tax  on  humbug,  an  excise 
On  solemn  plausibilities, 
A  stamp  on  everything  that  canted! 
No  millions  more,  if  these  were  granted, 
Henceforward  would  be  raised  or  wanted." 

So  an  American  politician,  who,  by  caucus-packing,  "  wire- 
pulling," and  perhaps  bribery,  has  contrived  to  get  elected 
to  a  State  legislature  or  to  Congress,  will  publicly  thank 
his  fellow-citizens  for  having  sent  him  there  "by  their 
voluntary,  unbiased  suffrages."  When  the  patriot,  Patkul, 
was  surrendered  to  the  vengeance  of  Charles  XII  of  Swe- 
den, the  following  sentence  was  read  over  to  him:  "It  is 
hei-eby  made  known  to  be  the  order  of  his  Majestv,  our 
most  merciful  sovereign,  that  this  man,  who  is  a  traitor  to 
his  country,  be  broken  on  the  wheel  and  quartered,"  etc. 
"  What  mercy!"  exclaimed  the  poor  criminal.  It  was  with 
the  same  mockery  of  benevolence  that  the  Holy  Inquisition 
was  wont,  when  condemning  a  heretic  to  the  torture,  to 
express  the  tenderest  concern  for  his  temporal  and  eternal 
welfare.  One  of  the  most  offensive  forms  of  cant  is  the 
profession  of  extreme  humility  by  men  who  are  full  of 
pride  and  arrogance.  The  haughtiest  of  all  the  Roman 
Pontiffs  styled  himself  "the  servant  of  the  servants  of 
God,"  at  the  very  time  when  he  humiliated  the  Emperor  of 
Germany  by  making  him  wait  five  days  barefoot  in  his 
ante-chamber  in  the  depth  of  winter,  and  expected  all  the 
Kings  of  Europe,  when  in  his  presence,  to  kiss  his  toe  or 
hold  his  stirrup.  Catherine  of  Russia  was  always  mouthing 
the  language  of  piety  and  benevolence,  especially  when 
about  to  wage  war  or  do  some  rascally  deed.  Louis  the 
Fourteenth's  paroxysms  of  repentance  and  devotion  were 
always  the  occasion  for  fresh  outrages  upon  the  Huguenots; 


168  words;  TnEiu  use  and  abuse. 

and  Napoleon  was  always  prating  of  bis  love  of  peace, 
and  of  being  compelled  to  fight  by  his  quarrelsome  neigh- 
bors. While  the  French  revolutionists  were  shouting 
"Liberty,  Equality  and  Fraternity!"  men  were  executed 
in  Paris  without  law  and  against  law,  and  heads  fell  by, 
cartloads  from  the  knife  of  the  guillotine.  The  favorite 
amusement  of  Couthon,  one  of  the  deadliest  of  Robes- 
pierre's fellow-cutthroats,  was  the  rearing  of  doves.  The 
contemplation  of  their  innocence,  he  said,  made  the  charm 
of  his  existence,  in  consoling  him  for  the  wickedness  of 
men.  Even  when  he  had  reached  the  height  of  his  "  bad 
preeminence  "  as  a  terrorist,  he  was  carried  to  the  National 
Assembly  or  the  Jacobin  Club  fondling  little  lapdogs,  which 
he  nestled  in  his  bosom.  It  is  told  of  one  of  his  bloody 
compatriots,  who  was  as  fatal  to  men  and  as  fond  of  dogs 
as  himself,  that  when  a  distracted  wife,  who  had  pleaded 
to  him  in  vain  for  her  husband's  life,  in  retiring  from  his 
presence,  chanced  to  tread  on  his  favorite  spaniel's  tail,  he 
cried  out,  "  Good  heavens.  Madam!  have  you  no  humanity?'' 
"  My  children,"  said  Dr.  Johnson,  "  clear  your  minds  of 
cant."  If  professional  politicians  should  follow  this  advice, 
many  of  them  would  be  likely  to  find  their  occupation 
clean  gone.  At  elections  they  are  so  wont  to  simulate  the 
sentiments  and  language  of  patriotism, —  to  pretend  a  zeal 
for  this,  an  indignation  for  that,  and  a  horror  for  another 
thing,  about  which  they  are  known  to  be  comparatively  in- 
difterent,  as  'f  any  flummery  miglit  be  crammed  down  the 
throats  of  the  people, —  that  the  voters,  whom  the  old  party 
hacks  fancy  they  are  gulling,  are  simply  laughing  in  their 
sleeves  at  their  transparent  attempts  at  deception.  Daniel 
O'Connell,  the  popular  Irish  orator,  is  said  to  have  had 
a  lai-ge  vocabulary  of  stock  political  phrases,  upon  which  he 


WORDS    WITHOLT    MEAXIXG.  IGO 

rang  the  changes  with  magical  eflFect.  He  could  whine, 
and  wheedle,  and  wink  with  one  eye,  while  he  wopt  with 
the  other;  and  if  his  flow  of  oratory  was  ever  in  danger  of 
halting,  he  had  always  at  hand  certain  stereotyped  catch- 
words, such  as  his  "own  green  isle,"  his  "  Irish  heart,"  his 
"head  upon  the  block,"  his  "hereditary  bondsmen,  know 
ye  not,"  etc.,  which  never  failed  him  in  any  emei-gency. 
Offensive  as  are  all  these  forms  of  speech  without  mean- 
ing, they  are  not  more  so  than  the  hollow  language  of — 
strange  to  say, —  some  moral  philosophers.  Many  persons 
have  been  so  impressed  by  the  ethical  essays  of  Seneca,  in 
which  he  sings  the  praises  of  poverty,  and  denounces  in 
burning  language  the  corruption  of  Rome  and  the  ex- 
tortion in  the  provinces,  that  they  could  account  for  the 
excellence  of  these  writings  only  on  the  theory  of  a  Chris- 
tian influence;  and  a  report  gained  credit  that  the  Roman 
philosopher  had  met  and  conversed  with  the  Apostle  Paul. 
But  what  are  these  brilliant  moral  discourses?  Reading 
them  by  the  light  of  the  author's  life  and  character,  we 
find  they  are  only  words.  A  late  German  historian  tells 
us  that  the  same  Seneca  who  could  discourse  so  finely  upon 
the  abstemiousness  and  contentment  of  the  philosopher,  and 
who,  on  all  occasions,  paraded  his  contempt  for  earthly 
things  as  nothingness  and  vanity,  amassed,  during  the  four 
years  of  his  greatest  prosperity  and  power,  a  fortune  of 
thi-ee  hundred  millions  of  sesterces,— over  fifteen  millions 
of  dollars.  While  writing  his  treatise  on  "  Poverty,"  he 
had  in  his  house  five  hundred  citrus  tables,  tables  of  veined 
wood  brought  from  Mount  Atlas,  -which  sometimes  cost 
as  much  as  twenty-five,  and  even  seventy  thousand  dol- 
lars. The  same  Seneca,  who  denounced  extortion  with  so 
virtuous  anger,  built  his  famous  museum  gardens  with  the 


170  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

gold  and  the  tears  of  Numidia.  The  same  Seneca,  who 
preached  so  much  about  purity  of  morals,  was  openly 
accused  of  adultery  with  Julia  and  Agrippina,  and  led  his 
pupil  Nero  into  still  more  shameful  practices.  He  wrote  a 
work  upon  "  Clemency,"  yet  had,  beyond  question,  a  large 
part  of  Nero's  atrocities  upon  his  conscience.  It  was  he 
who  composed  the  letter  in  which  Nero  justified  before  the 
Senate  the  murder  of  his  own  mother.* 

Common,  however,  as  are  meaningless  phrases  on  the 
stump  and  platform,  and  even  in  moral  treatises,  it  is  to  be 
feai-ed  that  they  are  hardly  less  so  in  the  meeting-house, 
and  there  they  are  doubly  offensive,  if  not  unpardonable. 
It  is  a  striking  remark  of  Coleridge,  that  truths,  of  all 
others  the  most  awful  and  interesting,  are  too  often  con- 
sidered so  true  that  they  lose  all  the  power  of  truth,  and 
lie  bedridden  in  the  dormitory  of  the  soul,  side  by  side 
with  the  most  despised  and  exploded  errors.  Continual 
handling  wears  off  the  beauty  and  significance  of  words, 
and  it  is  only  by  a  distinct  effort  of  the  mind  that  we  can 
restore  their  full  meaning.  Gradually  the  terms  most 
vital  to  belief  cease  to  mean  what  they  meant  when  first 
used;  the  electric  life  goes  out  of  them;  and,  for  all  practi- 
cal purposes,  they  are  dead.  Hence  it  is  that  "  the  tradi- 
tional maxidis  of  old  experience,  though  seldom  questioned, 
have  often  so  little  effect  on  the  conduct  of  life,  because 
their  meaning  is  never,  by  most  persons,  really  felt,  until 
personal  experience  has  brought  it  home.  And  thus,  also, 
it  is  that  so  many  doctrines  of  religion,  ethics,  and  even 
politics,  so  full  of  meaning  and  reality  to  first  converts, 
have  manifested  a  tendency  to  degenerate  rapidly  into  life- 
less dogmas,  which  tendency  all  the  eftorts  of  an  education 

♦  Ullioru's  "Conflict  of  Christianity  with  lleutheuism; "  pp.  93,  94. 


-WORDS    WITHOUT   MEANING.  171 

expressly  and  skilfully  direcled    to  keeping    the   meaning 
alive  are  barely  found  sufficient  to  counteract."* 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  many  a  man  whose  life 
is  thoroughly  selfish  cheats  himself  into  the  belief  that  he 
is  pious,  because  he  parrots  with  ease  the  phrases  of  piety 
and  orthodoxy.  Who  is  not  familiar  with  scores  of  such 
pet  phrases  and  cant  terms,  which  are  repeated  at  this 
day  apparently  without  a  thought  of  their  meaning? 
Who  ever  attended  a  missionary  meeting  without  hearing 
"  the  Macedonian  cry,"  and  an  account  of  some  "  little 
interest,"  and  "fields  white  for  the  harvest"?  Who  is 
not  weary  of  the  ding-dong  of  "  our  Zion  "  and  the  sole- 
cism of  "in  our  midst";  and  who  does  not  long  for  a 
verbal  millennium  When  Christians  shall  no  longer  "feel 
to  take"  and  "grant  to  give"?  "How  much  I  regret," 
says  Coleridge,  "  that  so  many  religious  persons  of  the 
present  day  think  it  necessary  to  adopt  a  certain  cant  of 
manner  and  phraseology  as  a  token  to  each  other!  They 
must  '  improve'  this  and  that  text,  and  they  must  do  so  and 
so  in  a  'prayerful'  way;  and  so  on.  A  young  lady  urged 
upon  me,  the  other  day,  that  such  and  such  feelings  were 
the  'marrow'  of  all  religion;  upon  whieh  I  recommended 
her  to  try  to  walk  to  London  on  her  marrow  bones  only." 
The  language  of  prayer,  both  public  and  private,  being 
made  up  more  or  less  of  technical  expressions,  tends  con- 
tinually to  become  effete.  The  scriptural  and  other 
phrases,  which  were  used  with  good  taste  and  judgment 
several  generations  ago,  may  have  lost  their  significance 
to-day,  and  should,  in  that  case,  be  exchanged  for  others 
which  have  a  living  meaning.  Profound  convictions,  it 
has  been  truly  said,  are  imperilled  by  the  continued  use 

♦Mill's  '-Logic." 


172  words:  their  use  and  abuse. 

of  conventional  phraseology  after  the  life  of  it  has  gone 
out,  so  that  nothing  in  the  real  experience  of  the  people 
responds  to  it,  when  they  hear  it  or  when  they  use  it. 
Mr.  Spurgeon,  in  his  "  Lectures  to  Students,"  remarks 
that  "  '  the  poor  unworthy  dust '  is  an  epithet  generally 
applied  to  themselves  by  the  proudest  men  in  the  congre- 
gation, and  not  seldom  by  the  most  moneyed  and  grovelling; 
in  which  case  the  last  words  are  not  so  very  inappi'opriate. 
We  have  heard  of  a  good  man  who,  in  pleading  for  his 
children  and  grandchildren,  was  so  completely  beclouded 
in  the  blinding  influence  of  this  expression,  that  he  ex- 
claimed, '  0  Lord,  save  thy  dust,  and  thy  dust's  dust,  and 
thy  dust's  dust's  dust.'  When  Abraham  said,  '  I  have 
taken  upon  me  to  speak  unto  the  Lord,  which  am  but  dust 
and  ashes,'  the  utterance  was  forcible  and  expressive;  but 
in  its  misquoted,  perverted,  and  abused  form,  the  sooner 
it  is  consigned  to  its  own  element  the  better." 

Many  persons  have  very  erroneous  ideas  of  what  con- 
stitutes religious  conversation.  That  is  not  necessarily 
religious  talk  which  is  interlarded  with  religious  phrases, 
or  which  is  solely  about  divine  things;  but  that  which  is 
permeated  with  religious  feeling,  which  is  full  of  truth, 
reverence,  and  love,  whatever  the  theme  ma}'  be.  Who 
has  not  heard  some  men  talk  of  the  most  worldly  things 
in  a  way  that  made  the  hearer  feel  the  electric  current  of 
spirituality  playing  through  their  words,  and  uplifting 
his  whole  spiritual  being?  And  who  has  not  heard  other 
men  talk  about  the  divinest  things  in  so  dry,  formal,  and 
soulless  a  way  that  their  words  seemed  a  profanation,  and 
chilled  him  to  the  core?  It  is  almost  a  justification  of 
slang  that  it  is  generall}'  an  efibrt  to  obtain  relief  from 
words  worn  bare  by  the  use  of  persons  who  put  neither 


WORDS    WITHOUT    MEANING.  173 

knowledge  nor  feeling  into  them,  and  which  seem  inca- 
pable of  expressing  anything  real. 

When  Lady  Townsend  was  asked  if  Whitefield  had 
recanted,  she  replied,  "No;  he  has  only  canted.''''  Often, 
when  there  is  no  deliberate  hypocrisy,  good  men  use  lan- 
guage so  exaggerated  and  unreal  as  to  do  more  harm  than 
the  grossest  worldliness.  We  have  often,  in  thinking  upon 
this  subject,  called  to  mind  a  saying  of  Dr.  Sharp,  of  Bos- 
ton, a  Baptist  preacher,  who  was  a  hater  of  all  cant  and 

shams.     "  There's  Dr. ,"  said    he,  about   the    time   of 

the  first  meeting  of  the  Evangelical  Alliance,  "  who  went 
all  the  way  to  Europe  to  talk  up  brotherly  love.  If  he 
should  meet  a  poor  Baptist  minister  in  the  street,  he 
wouldn't  speak  to  him."  Robert  Hall  had  an  intense  ab- 
horrence of  religious  cant,  to  which  he  sometimes  gave 
expression  in  blunt  terms.  A  young  preacher  who  was 
visiting  him  spent  a  day  in  sighing  and  in  begging  par- 
don for  his  suspirations,  saying  that  they  were  caused  by 
grief  that  he  had  so  hard  a  heart.  The  great  divine  bore 
with  him  all  the  first  day,  but  when  the  lamentations 
were  resumed  the  next  morning  at  breakfast,  he  said: 
"Why,  sir,  dcn't  be  cast  down;  remember  the  compensat- 
ing principle,  and  be  thankful  and  still."  "  Compensating 
principle!"  exclaimed  the  young  man;  "  what  can  compen- 
sate for  a  hard  heart?"  "  Why,  a  soft  head,  to  be  sure," 
said  Hall,  who,  if  rude,  certainly  had  great  provocation. 
Nothing  is  cheaper  than  pious  or  benevolent  talk.  A 
great  many  men  would  be  positive  forces  of  goodness  in 
the  world,  if  they  did  not  let  all  their  principles  and 
enthusiasm  escape  in  words.  They  are  like  locomotives 
which  let  off  so  much  steam  through  the  escape  valves, 
that,  though   they  fill   the    air   with    noise,  they  have    not 


174  words;  their  use  axd  abuse. 

power  enough  left  to  move  the  train.  There  is  hardly 
anything  which  so  fritters  spiritual  energy  as  talk  without 
deeds.  "  The  fluent  boaster  is  not  the  man  who  is  stead- 
iest before  the  enemy;  it  is  well  said  to  him  that  his  cour- 
age is  better  kept  till  it  is  wanted.  Loud  utterances  of 
virtuous  indignation  against  evil  from  the  platform,  or  in 
the  drawing-room,  do  not  characterize  the  spiritual  giant; 
so  much  indignation  as  is  expressed  has  found  vent;  it  is 
wasted;  is  taken  away  from  the  work  of  coping  with  evil; 
the  man  has  so  much  less  left.  And  hence  he  who  restrains 
that  love  of  talk  lays  up  a  fund  of  spiritual  strength."  * 

"  Prune  thou  thy  words,  the  thoughts  control 
That  o'er  thee  swell  and  throng; 
They  will  condense  within  thy  soul, 
And  change  to  purpose  strong. 

But  he  who  lets  his  feelings  run 
In  soft  luxurious  flow, 
■     Shrinks  when  hard  service  must  be  done, 
And  faints  at  every  woe. 

Faith's  meanest  deed  more  favor  bears, 

Where  hearts  and  wills  are  weigh'd. 
Than  brightest  transports,  choicest  prayers. 

Which  bloom  their  hour  and  fade."  + 

It  is  said  that  Pambos,  an  illiterate  saint  of  the  middle 
ages,  being  unable  to  read,  came  to  some  one  to  be  taught 
a  psalm.  Having  learned  the  simple  verse,  "I  said,  I  will 
take  heed  to  my  ways,  that  I  offend  not  with  my  tongue,"' 
he  went  away,  saying  that  was  enough  if  it  was  practically 
acquired.  When  asked  six  months,  and  again  many  years 
after,  why  he  did  not  come  to  learn  another  verse,  he 
answered  that  he  had  never  been  able  truly  to  master 
this.  A  man  may  have  a  heart  overflowing  with  love 
and   sympathy,   even    though    he    is    not   in    the   habit    of 

*  Sermons,  by  Rev.  F.  W.  Robertson.  +  Professor  J.  H.  Newman. 


■U'ORDS    WITHOUT    MEANING.  175 

exhibiting  on  his  cards  "  J.  Good  Soul,  Philanthropist," 
and  was  never  known  to  unfold  his  cambric  handkerchief, 
with  the  words,  "  Let  us  weep."  On  the  other  hand, 
nothing  is  easier  than  to  use  a  set  phraseology  without 
attaching  to  it  any  clear  and  definite  meaning, —  to  cheat 
one's  self  with  the  semblance  of  thought  or  feeling,  when 
no  thought  or  feeling  exists.  It  has  been  truly  said  that 
when  good  men  who  have  no  deep  religious  fervor  use 
fervent  language,  which  they  have  caught  from  others, 
or  which  was  the  natural  expression  of  what  they  felt  in 
other  and  better  years, —  above  all,  when  they  employ  on 
mean  and  trivial  occasions  expressions  which  have  been 
forged  in  the  fires  of  affliction  and  hammered  out  in 
the  shock  of  conflict, —  they  cannot  easily  imagine  what 
a  disastrous  impression  they  produce  on  keen  and  dis- 
criminating minds.  The  cheat  is  at  once  detected,  and 
the  hasty  inference  is  drawn  that  all  expressions  of  relig- 
ious earnestness  are  affected  and  artificial.  The  honest 
and  irrepressible  utterance  of  strong  conviction  and  deep 
emotion  commands  respect;  but  intense  words  should 
never  be  used  when  the  religious  life  is  not  intense. 
"  Costing  little,  words  are  given  prodigally,  and  sacrificial 
acts  must  toil  for  years  to  cover  the  space  which  a  single 
fervid  promise  has  stretched  itself  over.  No  wonder  that 
the  slow  acts  are  superseded  by  the  available  words,  the 
weighty  bullion  by  the  current  paper  money.  If  I  have 
conveyed  all  I  feel  by  "language,  I  am  tempted  to  fancy, 
by  the  relief  experienced,  that  feeling  has  attained  its 
end  and  realized  itself.  Farewell,  then,  to  the  toil  of  the 
'daily  sacrifice! '  Devotion  has  found  for  itself  a  vent  in 
words."  * 

*"Lifc  and  Letters  of  F.  W.  Robertson." 


176  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

Art,  as  well  as  literature,  politics,  and  religion,  has  its 
cant,  which  is  as  offensive  as  any  of  its  other  forms. 
When  Rossini  was  asked  why  he  had  ceased  attending 
the  opera  in  Paris,  he  replied,  "  I  am  embarrassed  at 
listening  to  music  with  Frenchmen.  In  Italy  or  Ger- 
many, I  am  sitting  quietly  in  the  pit,  and  on  each  side 
of  me  is  a  man  shabbily  dressed,  but  who  feels  the 
music  as  I  do;  in  Paris  I  have  on  each  side  of  me  a 
fine  gentleman  in  straw-colored  gloves,  who  explains  to 
me  all  I  feel,  but  who  feels  nothing.  All  he  says  is  very 
clever,  indeed,  and  it  is  often  very  true;  but  it  takes  the 
gloss  off  my  own  impression, —  if  I  have  any." 


CHAPTER  VI. 

SOME    ABUSES    OF    WORDS. 

He  that  hath  knowledge  spareth  his  words.— Proverbs  xvii,  27. 

Learn  the  value  of  a  man's  words  and  expressions,  and  you  know  him.  .  . 
He  who  has  a  superlative  for  everything  wants  a  measure  for  the  great 
or  small. — Lavater. 

Words  are  women;  deeds  are  men.— George  Herbert. 

He  that  uses  many  words  for  the  explaining  of  any  subject,  doth,  like 
the  cuttlefish,  hide  himself  for  the  most  part  in  his  own  ink. — Rat. 

npHE  old  Roman  poet  Ennius  was  so  proitd  of  knowing 
-*~  three  languages  that  he  used  to  declare  that  he  had 
three  hearts.  The  Emperor  Charles  V  expressed  himself 
still  more  strongly,  and  declared  that  in  proportion  to 
the  number  of  languages  a  man  knows,  is  he  more  of  a 
man.  According  to  this  theory,  Cardinal  Mezzofanti,  who 
understood  one  hundred  and  fourteen  languages,  and 
spoke  thirty  with  rare  excellence,  must  have  been  many 
men  condensed  into  one.  Of  all  the  human  polyglots  in 
ancient  or  modern  times,  he  had  perhaps  the  greatest 
knowledge  of  words.  Yet,  with  all  his  marvellous  lin- 
guistic knowledge,  he  was  a  mere  prodigy  or  freak  of 
nature,  and,  it  has  been  well  observed,  scarcely  deserves  a 
higher  place  in  the  Pantheon  of  intellect  than  a  blind- 
fold chess-player  or  a  calculating  boy.  Talking  foreign 
languages  with  a  fluency  and  accuracy  which  caused 
strangers  to  mistake  him  for  a  compatriot,  he  attempted 
no  work  of  utility, —  left  no  trace  of  his  colossal  powers; 
and  therefore,  in  contemplating  them,  we  can  but  wonder 

177 


178  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

at  liis  gifts,  as  we  wonder  at  the  Belgian  giant  or  a  five- 
legge<l  lamb.  In  allusion  t()  his  hyperbolical  acquisitions, 
De  Quincey  suggests  that  the  following  would  be  an 
appropriate  epitaph  for  his  eminence:  "Here  lies  a  man 
who,  in  the  act  of  dying,  committed  a  robbery, —  abscond- 
ing from  his  fellow-creatures  with  a  valuable  polyglot 
dictionary."  Enormous,  however,  as  were  the  linguistic 
acquisitions  of  Mezzofanti,  no  man  was  ever  less  vain  of 
his  acquirements, —  priding  himself,  as  he  did,  less  upon 
his  attainments  than  most  pe'rsons  upon  a  smattering  of 
a  single  tongue.  "  What  am  I,"  said  he  to  a  visitor, 
"but  an  ill-bound  dictionary?"  The  saying  of  Catherine 
de  Medicis  is  too  often  suggested  by  such  prodigies  of 
linguistic  acquisition.  When  told  that  Scaliger  understood 
twenty  different  languages, — "That's  twenty  words  for 
one  idea,"  said  she;  "I  had  rather  have  twenty  ideas  for 
one  word."  In  this  reply  she  foreshadowed  the  great 
error  of  modern  scholarship,  which  is  too  often  made  the 
be-all  and  the  end-all  of  life,  when  its  only  relation  to  it 
should  be  that  of  a  graceful  handmaid.  The  story  of  the 
scholar  who,  dj'ing,  regretted  at  the  end  of  his  career 
that  he  had  not  concentrated  all  his  energies  upon  the 
dative  case,  only  burlesques  an  actual  fact.  The  educated 
man  is  too  often  one  who  knows  more  of  language  than 
of  idea, —  more  of  the  husk  than  of  the  kernel, —  more 
of  the  vehicle  than  of  the  substance  it  bears.  He  has 
got  together  a  heap  of  symbols, —  of  mere  counters, — with 
which  he  feels  himself  to  be  an  intellectual  Rothschild; 
but  of  the  substance  of  these  shadows,  the  sterling  gold 
of  intellect,  coin  current  throughout  the  realm,  he  has 
not  an  eagle.  All  his  wealth  is  in  paper, —  paper  like  bad 
scrip,   marked  with   a  high    nominal    amount,   but    useless 


SOME    ABUSES    OF    WOKUS.  179 

in  exchange,  and  repudiated  in  real  traffic.  The  great 
scholar  is  often  an  intellectual  miser,  who  expends  Ukj 
spiritual  energy  that  might  make  him  a  hero  upon  tlie 
detection  of  a  wrong  dot,  a  false  syllable,  or  an  inaccurate 
word. 

In  this  country,  where  fluency  of  speech  is  vouchsafed 
in  so  large  a  measure  to  the  people,  and  every  third  man 
is  an  orator,  it  is  easier  to  find  persons  with  the  twenty 
words  for  one  idea,  than  persons  with  twenty  ideas  for 
one  word.  Of  all  the  peoples  on  the  globe,  except  perhaps 
the  Irish,  Americans  are  the  most  spendthrift  of  language. 
Not  only  in  our  court-houses  and  representative  halls, 
but  everywhere,  we  are  literally  deluged  with  words, — 
words, —  words.  Everybody  seems  born  to  make  long 
speeches,  as  the  sparks  to  fly  upward.  The  Aristotelian 
theory  that  Nature  abhors  a  vacuum  appears  to  be  a 
universal  belief,  and  all  are  laboring  to  fill  up  the  realms 
of  space  with  "  mouthfuls  of  spoken  wind."  The  quantity 
of  breath  that  is  wasted  at  our  public  meetings, —  religions, 
political,  philanthropic,  and  literary, —  is  incalculable. 
Hardly  a  railroad  or  a  canal  is  opened,  but  the  occasion 
is  seized  on  as  a  chance  for  speeches  of  "  learned  length 
and  thundering  sound";  and  even  a  new  hotel  cannot 
throw  open  its  doors  without  an  amount  of  breath  being 
expended,  sufficient,  if  economically  used,  to  waft  a  boat 
across  a  small  lake. 

One  is  struck,  in  reading  the  "  thrilling"  addresses  on 
various  occasions,  which  are  said  to  have  "chained  as  with 
hooks  of  steel  the  attention  of  thousands,"  and  which 
confer  on  their  authors  "immortal  reputations"  that  die 
within  a  year,  to  see  what  tasteless  word-piling  passes 
with  many   fur  eloquence.     The   advice   given    in   Racine's 


180  AVORDS;    THEIK    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

^''Plaidcurs,''  by  an  ear-tortured  judge  to  a  long-winded 
lawyer,  "  to  skip  to  the  deluge,"  might  wisely  be  repeated 
to  our  thousand  Ciceros  and  Chathams.  The  Baconian 
art  of  condensation  seems  nearly  obsolete.  Many  of  our 
orators  are  forever  breaking  butterflies  on  a  wheel, — 
raising  an  ocean  to  drown  a  fly, —  loading  cannon  to  shoot 
at  humming-birds.  Thought  and  expression  are  sup- 
planted by  lungs  and  the  dictionary.  Instead  of  great 
thoughts  couched  in  a  few  close,  home,  significant  sen- 
tences,—  the  value  of  a  thousand  pounds  sterling  of 
sense  concentrated  into  a  cut  and  polished  diamond, — 
we  have  a  mass  of  verbiage,  delivered  with  a  pompous 
elocution.  Instead  of  ideas  brought  before  us,  as  South 
expresses  it,  like  water  in  a  well,  where  you  have  fulness 
in  a  little  compass,  we  have  the  same  "  carried  out  into 
many  pett3%  creeping  rivulets,  with  length  and  shallow- 
ness together." 

It  is  in  our  legislative  bodies  that  this  evil  has  reached 
the  highest  climax.  A  member  may  have  a  thought  or  a 
fact  which  may  settle  a  question;  but  if  it  maj'  be  couched 
in  a  sentence  or  two,  he  thinks  it  not  worth  delivering. 
Unless  he  can  wire-draw  it  into  a  two-hours  speech,  or  at 
least  accompany  it  with  some  needless  verbiage  to  plump 
it  out  in  the  report,  he  will  sit  stock  still,  and  leave  tho 
floor  to  men  who  have  fewer  ideas  and  more  words  at 
command.  The  public  mind,  too,  revolts  sometimes 
against  nourishment  in  highly  concentrated  forms ;  it 
requires  bulk  as  well  as  nutriment,  just  as  hay,  as  well 
as  coi'n,  is  given  to  horses,  to  distend  the  stomach,  and 
enable  it  to  act  with  its  full  powers.  Then,  again, —  and 
this,  perhaps,  is  one  of  the  main  causes  of  long-winded 
speeches, —  there    is   a   sort   of  reverence    entertained    for 


SOME    ABUSES    OF    WORDS.  181 

a  man  who  can  "spout"  two  or  three  hours  on  the 
stretch;  and  the  wonder  i.s  heightened,  if  he  does  it 
without  making  a  fool  of  himself.  Nothing,  however, 
can  be  more  absurd  than  to  regard  mere  volubility  as 
a  i)roof  of  intellectual  power.  So  far  is  this  from  being 
the  case  that  it  may  be  doubted  whether  any  large- 
thoughted  man,  who  was  accustomed  to  grapple  with  the 
great  problems  of  life  and  society,  ever  found  it  easy 
upon  the  rostrum  to  deliver  his  thoughts  with  fluency 
and  grace. 

Bruce,  the  traveller,  long  ago  remarked  of  the  Abyssin- 
ians,  that  "they  are  all  orators,  as,"  he  adds,  "are  most 
barbarians."  It  is  often  said  of  such  tonguey  men  that 
they  have  "  a  great  command  of  language,"  when  the 
simple  fact  is  that  language  has  a  great  command  of 
them.  As  Whately  says,  they  have  the  same  command 
of  language  that  a  man  has  of  a  horse  that  runs  away 
with  him.  A  true  command  of  language  consists  in  the 
power  of  discrimination,  selection,  and  rejection,  rather 
than  in  that  of  multiplication  The  greatest  orators  of 
ancient  and  modern  times  have  been  remarkable  for  their 
economy  of  woi'ds.     Demosthenes,  when  he 

"Shook  the  arsenal,  and  fulmined  over  Greece 
To  Macedon  and  Artaxerxes'  throne," 

rarely  spoke  over  thirty  minutes,  and  Cicero  took  even 
less  time  to  blast  Catiline  with  his  lightnings.  There 
are  some  of  the  Greek  orator's  speeches  which  were 
spoken,  as  they  may  now  be  read  with  sufficient  slowness 
and  distinctness,  in  less  than  half  an  hour;  yet  they  are 
the  effusions  of  that  rapid  and  mighty  genius  the  effect 
of  whose  words  the  ancients  exhausted  their  language 
in  describing;  which  they  could   adequately  describe  only 


182  words;  their  use  and  ahuse. 

by  comparing  it  to  the  workings  of  the  most  subtle  and 
powerful  agents  of  nature, —  the  ungovernable  torrent, 
the  resistless  thunder.  Chatham  was  often  briefer  still, 
and  Mirabeau,  the  master-spirit  of  the  French  tribune, 
condensed  his  thunders  into  twenty  minutes. 

It  is  said  that  not  one  of  the  three  leading  members 
of  the  convention  that  formed  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  spoke,  in  the  debates  upon  it,  over  twenty 
minutes.  Alexander  Hamilton  was  reckoned  one  of  the 
most  diffuse  speakers  of  his  day;  yet  he  did  not  occupy 
more  than  two  hours  and  a  half  in  his  longest  arguments 
at  the  bar,  nor  did  his  rival,  Aaron  Burr,  occupy  over 
half  that  time.  A  judge  who  was  intimately  acquainted 
with  Burr  and  his  practice  declares  that  he  repeatedly 
and  successfully  disposed  of  cases  involving  a  large 
amount  of  property  in  half  an  hour.  "  Indeed,"  says 
he,  "  on  one  occasion  he  talked  to  the  jury  seven  minutes 
in  such  a  manner  that  it  took  me,  on  the  bench,  half  an 
hour  to  straighten  them  out."  He  adds.  "'  I  once  asked 
him,  'Colonel  Burr,  why  cannot  lawyers  always  save  the 
time,  and  spare  the  patience  of  the  court  and  jury,  by 
dwelling  only  on  the  important  points  in  their  cases?' 
to  which  Burr  replied,  'Sir,  you  demand  the  greatest 
faculty  of  the  human  mind,  selection.'"  To  these  ex- 
amples we  may  add  that  of  a  great  English  advocate. 
"  I  asked  Sir  James  Scarlett,"  says  Buxton,  "  what  was 
the  secret  of  his  preeminent  success  as  an  advocate.  He 
replied  that  he  took  cai'e  to  press  liome  the  one  principal 
point  of  the  case,  without  paying  much  regard  to  the 
others.  He  also  said  that  he  knew  the  secret  of  being 
short.  '  I  find,'  said  he,  '  that  when  I  exceed  half  an  hour, 
I  am  always  doing  mischief  to  my  client.     If  I  drive  into 


SOME    ABUSES    OF    WORDS.  183 

the  heads  of  the  jury  unimportant  matter,  I  drive  out 
matter  more  important  that  I  had  previously  lodged 
there.' " 

Joubert,  a  French  author,  cultivated  verbal  economy 
to  such  an  extreme  that  he  tried  almost  to  do  without 
words.  "  If  there  is  a  man  on  earth,"  said  he,  "  tormented 
by  the  cursed  desire  to  get  a  whole  book  into  a  page,  a 
whole  page  into  a  phrase,  and  this  phrase  into  one  word, — 
that  man  is  myself."  The  ambition  of  many  American 
speakers,  and  not  a  few  writers,  is  apparently  the  reverse 
of  this.  .We  do  not  seem  to  know  that  in  many  cases, 
as  Hesiod  says,  a  half  is  more  than  the  whole;  and  that 
a  speech  or  a  treatise  hammered  out  painfully  in  every 
part  is  often  of  less  value  than  a  few  bright  links,  sug- 
gestive of  the  entire  chain  of  thought.  Who  wants  to 
swallow  a  whole  ox,  in  order  to  get  at  the  tenderloin? 

Prolixity,  it  has  been  well  said,  is  more  offensive  now 
than  it  once  was,  because  men  think  more  i-apidly.  They 
are  not  more  thoughtful  than  their  ancestors,  but  they 
are  more  vivid,  direct,  and  animated  in  their  thinking. 
They  are  more  impatient,  therefore,  of  long-windedness, 
of  a  loose  arrangement,  and  of  a  heavy,  dragging  move- 
ment in  the  presentation  of  truth.  "A  century  ago  men 
would  listen  to  speeches  and  sermons, —  to  divisions  and 
subdivisions, —  that  now  would  be  regarded  as  utterly 
intolerable.  As  the  human  body  is  whisked  through  space 
at  the  rate  of  a  mile  a  minute,  so  tlie  human  mind  travels 
with  an  equally  accelerated  pace.  Mental  operations  are 
on  straight  lines,  and  are  far  more  rapid  than  they  once 
were.  The  public  audience  now  craves  a  short  metliod, 
a  distinct,  sharp  statement,  and  a  rapid  and  accelerating 
movement,    upon    the    part   of    its    teachers."  *      It   is,   in 

*  Slicdd's  "Homiietics." 


184  words;  tiieih  use  and  abuse. 

short,  an  age  of  steam  and  electricity  that  we  live  in,  not 
of  slow  coaches;  an  age  of  locomotives,  electric  telegraphs, 
and  phonography;  and  hence  it  is  the  cream  of  a  speaker's 
thoughts  that  men  want, —  the  wheat,  and  not  the  chaflf, — 
the  kernel,  and  not  the  shell, —  the  strong,  pungent  essence, 
and  not  the  thin,  diluted  mixture.  The  model  discoux'se 
to-day  is  that  which  gives,  not  all  that  can  be  said,  even 
ivell  said,  on  a  subject,  but  the  very  apices  renim,  the  tops 
and  sums  of  things  reduced  to  their  simplest  expression, — 
the  drop  of  oil  extracted  from  thousands  of  roses,  and 
condensing  all  their  odors, —  the  healing  power  of  a  hun- 
dred weight  of  bark  in  a  few  grains  of  quinine. 

"  Certainly  the  greatest  and  wisest  conceptions  that  ever 
issued  from  the  mind  of  man,"  says  South,  "  have  been 
couched  under,  and  delivered  in,  a  few  close,  home,  and 
significant  words.  .  .  Was  not  the  work  of  all  the  six 
days  [of  creation]  transacted  in  so  many  words?  .  .  . 
Heaven,  and  earth,  and  all  the  host  of  both,  as  it  were, 
dropped  from  God's  mouth,  and  nature  itself  was  but  the 
product  of  a  word.  .  .  The  seven  wise  men  of  Greece, 
so  famous  for  their  wisdom  all  the  world  over,  acquired 
all  that  fame,  each  of  them  by  a  single  sentence  consisting 
of  two  or  three  words.  And  y^cuf/t  <rzauzu'^  still  lives  and 
flourishes  in  the  mouths  of  all,  while  many  vast  volumes 
are  extinct,  and  sunk  into  dust  and  utter  oblivion." 

Akin  to  the  prolixity  of  style  which  weakens  so  many 
speeches,  is  the  habitual  exaggeration  of  language  which 
deforms  both  our  public  and  our  private  discourse.  The 
most  unmanageable  of  all  parts  of  speech,  with  many 
persons,  is  the  adjective.  Voltaire  has  justly  said  that 
the  adjectives  are  often  the  greatest  enemies  of  the  sub- 
stantives, though  they  may  agree  in  gender,  number,  and 


SOME    ABUSES    OF    WORDS.  185 

case.  Generally  the  \veakne.ss  of  a  composition  is  just  in 
proportion  to  the  frequency  with  which  this  class  of  words 
is  introduced.  As  in  gunnery  the  force  of  the  discharge 
is  proportioned,  not  to  the  amount  of  powder  that  can  be 
used,  but  to  the  amount  that  can  be  thoroughly  ignited, 
so  it  is  not  the  multitude  of  w'ords,  but  the  exact  num- 
ber fired  by  the  thought,  that  gives  energy  to  expression. 
There  are  some  writers  and  speakers  who  seem  to  have 
forgotten  that  there  are  three  degrees  of  comparison. 
The  only  adjectives  they  ever  use  are  the  superlative,  and 
even  these  are  raised  to  the  tltird  power.  With  them 
there  is  no  gradation,  no  lights  and  shadows.  Every  hill 
is  Alpine,  every  valley  Tartarean;  every  virtue  is  godlike, 
every  fault  a  felony;  every  breeze  a  tempest,  and  every 
molehill  a  mountain.  Praise  or  blame  beggars  their 
vocabulary;  epithets  are  heightened  into  superlatives; 
superlatives  stretch  themselves  into  hypei-boles;  and 
hyperboles  themselves  get  out  of  breath,  and  die  asthmat- 
ically  of  exhaustion. 

Of  all  the  civilized  peoples  on  the  face  of  the  globe, 
our  Hibernian  friends  excepted,  Americans  are  probably 
the  most  addicted  to  this  exaggeration  of  speech.  As  our 
mountains,  lakes  and  rivers  are  all  on  a  gigantic  scale, 
we  seem  to  think  our  speech  must  be  framed  after  the  same 
pattern.  Even  our  jokes  are  of  the  most  stupendous  kind; 
they  set  one  to  thinking  of  the  Alleghanies,  or  suggest 
the  immensity  of  the  prairies.  A  Western  orator,  in 
portraying  the  most  trivial  incident,  rolls  along  a  Missis- 
sippian  flood  of  eloquence,  and  the  vastness  of  his  meta- 
phors makes  you  think  you  are  living  in  the  age  of  the 
megatheriums  and  saurians,  and  listening  to  one  of  a 
pre- Adamite  race.     Our  j)olitical  speeches,  instead  of  being 


18G  WOllDS;    TIIEIJl    USE    AND    AJJLSE. 

couched  in  plain  and  temperate  language,  too  often 
briatle 

"With  terms  unsquared 
Whicli,  from  tlie  tongue  of  roaring  Typhon  droiiped, 
Would  seeia  hyperboles." 

In  ordinary  conversation,  such  is  our  enthusiasm  or  our 
poverty  of  expression,  that  we  cannot  talk  upon  the  most 
ordinary  themes,  except  in  the  most  extravagant  and  en- 
raptured terms.  Everything  that  pleases  us  is  positively 
"delicious,"  "nice,"  or  "charming";  everything  handsome 
is  "elegant,"  or  "splendid";  everything  that  we  dislike  is 
"hateful,"  "dreadful,"  "  horrible,"  or  "shocking."  Listen 
to  a  circle  of  lively  young  ladies  for  a  few  minutes,  and 
you  will  learn  that,  within  the  compass  of  a  dozen  hours, 
they  have  met  with  more  marvellous  adventures  and  hair- 
breadth escapes, —  passed  through  more  thrilling  experi- 
ences, and  seen  more  gorgeous  spectacles, —  endured  more 
fright,  and  enjoyed  more  rapture, —  than  could  be  crowded 
into  a  whole  life-time,  even  if  spun  out  to  threescore  and 
ten. 

Ask  a  person  what  he  thinks  of  the  weather  in  a  rainy 
season,  and  he  will  tell  you  that  "  it  rains  cats  and  dogs," 
or  that  "  it  beats  all  the  storms  since  the  flood."  If  his 
clothes  get  sprinkled  in  crossing  the  street,  he  has  been 
"drenched  to  the  skin."  All  our  winds  blow  a  hurricane; 
all  our  fires  are  conflagrations, —  even  though  only  a  hen- 
coop is  burned;  all  our  fogs  can  be  cut  with  a  knife.  No- 
body fails  in  this  country;  he  "  bursts  up."  All  our 
orators  rival  Demosthenes  in  eloquence;  they  beat  Chil- 
lingworth  in  logic;  and  their  sarcasm  is  more  "withering" 
than  that  of  Junius  himself.  Who  ever  heard  of  a  pub- 
lic  meeting    in    this   country  that  was  not  "an  immense 


SOME   ABUSES   OF   WORDS.  187 

demonstration";  of  an  actor's  benefit  at  which  the  house 
was  not  "crowded  from  pit  to  dome";  of  a  political  nomi- 
nation that  was  not  ''sweeping  the  country  like  wild-fire"? 
Where  is  the  rich  man  who  does  not  "roll  in  wealth'"; 
or  the  poor  man  who  is  "worth  the  first  red  cent"?  All 
our  good  men  are  paragons  of  virtue, —  our  villains,  mon- 
sters of  iniquity. 

Many  of  our  public  speakers  seem  incapable  of  express- 
ing themselves  in  a  plain,  calm,  truthful  manner  on  any 
subject  whatever.  A  great  deal  of  our  writing,  too,  is 
pitched  on  an  unnatural,  falsetto  ke\'.  Quiet  ease  of  style, 
like  that  of  Cowley's  "  Essays,"  Goldsmith's  "  Vicar  of 
Wakefield,"  or  White's  "Natural  History  of  Selborne,"  is 
almost  a  lost  art.  Our  newspaper  literature  is  becoming 
more  and  more  sensational;  and  it  seems  sometimes  as  if 
it  would  come  to  consist  of  head-lines  and  exclamation 
points.  Some  of  the  most  popular  correspondents  am 
those  whose  communications  are  a  perfect  florilegitim  of 
fine  words.  They  rival  the  "  tulipomania"  in  their  love  of 
gaudy  and  glaring  colors,  and  apparently,  care  little  how 
trite  or  feeble  their  thoughts  may  be,  provided  they  have 
dragon- wings,  all  green  and  gold.  It  was  said  of  Rufus 
Choate,  whose  brain  teemed  with  a  marvellous  wealth  of 
words,  and  who  was  very  prodigal  of  adjectives,  that  ho 
"drove  a  substantive-and-six  "  whenever  he  spoke  in  pub- 
lic, and  that  he  would  be  as  pathetic  as  the  grand  laincii- 
tations  in  "Samson  Agonistes"  on  the  obstruction  of  fi>li- 
ways,  and  rise  to  the  cathedral  music  of  the  uiiivci-si"  on 
the  right  to  manufacture  India-rubber  suspenders.  Whrn 
Cliie(-,Iustice  Shaw,  before  whom  he  had  often  pleaded, 
heard  (hat  there  was  a  new  edition  of  "  Worcester's  Dic- 
tionary," containing  two  thousand  five  hundred  new  words, 


183  AVOUDS;    THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

111!  exclaimed,  "  For  heaven's  sake,  don't  let  Choate  get  hold 
of  it!"* 

Even  scientific  writers,  who  might  be  expected  to  aim  at 
some  exactness,  often  caricature  truth  with  equal  grossness, 
describing  microscopic  things  by  colossal  metaphors.  Thus 
a  French  naturalist  represents  the  blood  of  a  louse  as 
"rushing  through  his  veins  like  a  torrent!"  Even  in 
treating  on  this  very  subject  of  exaggeration,  a  writer  in 
an  English  periodical,  after  rebuking  sharply  this  Ameri- 
can fault,  himself  outrages  truth  by  declaring  that  "  he 
would  walk  fifty  miles  on  foot  to  see  the  man  that  never 
caricatures  the  subject  on  which  he  speaks!"  To  a  critic 
who  thus  fails  to  reck  his  own  rede,  one  may  say  with  Sir 
Thomas  Browne:  "Thou  who  so  hoth^  disclaimest  the 
devil,  be  not  thyself  guilty  of  diabolism." 

Seriously,  when  shall  we  have  done  with  this  habit  of 
amplification  and  exaggeration, —  of  blowing  up  molehills 
into  Himalayas  and  Chimborazos?  Can  anything  be  more 
obvious  than  the  dangers  of  such  a  practice?  Is  it  not 
evident  that  by  applying  super-superlatives  to  things  petty 
or  commonplace,  we  must  exhaust  our  vocabulary,  so  that, 
when  a  really  great  thing  is  to  be  described,  we  shall  be 
bankrupt  of  adjectives?  It  is  true  there  is  no  more  unpar- 
donable sin  than  dulness;  but,  to  avoid  being  drowsy,  it  is 
not  necessar}^  that  our  "  good  Homers"  should  be  always 
electrifying  us  with  a  savage  intensity  of  expression. 
There  is  nothing  of  which  a  reader  tires  so  soon  as  of  a 
continual  blaze  of  brilliant  periods, —  a  style  in  which  a 
"(/»'//  mound  ^^  and  a  "let  there  be  light"  are  crowded 

*  Perhaps  Choate  justified  himself  by  the  authority  of  Burke,  who  some- 
times  harnessed  five  adjectives  to  a  noun;  e.g.,  in  his  diatribe  against  the  meta- 
pliysicians,  he  says;  "Their  hearts  are  hke  that  of  the  principal  of  e^il  him 
H  If,— incorporeal,  pure,  unmixed,  dephlegmated,  defecated  evil." 


SOME    ABUSES    OF    WORDS.  189 

into  every  line.  On  the  oilier  hand,  there  is  nothing  which 
acids  so  much  to  the  beauty  of  style  as  contrast.  Where 
all  men  are  giants,  there  are  no  giants;  where  all  is  em- 
phatic in  style,  there  is  no  emphasis.  Travel  a  few  months 
among  the  mountains,  and  you  will  grow  as  sick  of  the 
everlasting  monotony  of  grandeur,  of  beetling  cliffs  and 
yawning  chasms,  as  of  an  eternal  succession  of  plains. 
Yet,  in  defiance  of  this  obvious  truth,  the  sensational 
writer  thinks  the  reader  will  deem  him  dull  unless  every 
sentence  blazes  with  meaning,  and  every  paragraph  is 
ci'ammed  with  power.  His  intellect  is  always  armed 
cap-a-pie,  and  every  passage  is  an  approved  attitude  of 
mental  carte  and  tierce.  If  he  were  able  to  create  a 
world,  there  would  probably  be  no  latent  heat  in  it,  and 
no  twilight;  and  should  he  drop  his  pen  and  turn  painter, 
his  pictures  would  be  all  foreground,  with  no  more 
perspective  than  those  of  the  Chinese. 

De  Quincey,  speaking  of  the  excitability  of  the  French, 
says  that,  having  appropriated  all  the  phrases  of  passion 
to  the  service  of  trivial  and  ordinary  life,  they  have  no 
language  of  passion  for  the  service  of  poeti'y,  or  of  occa- 
sions really  demanding  it,  because  it  has  been  already 
enfeebled  by  continual  association  with  cases  of  an  uniin- 
passioned  order.  "Ah,  Heavens!"  or  "0  my  God!"  are 
exclamations  so  exclusively  reserved  by  the  English  for 
cases  of  profound  interest  that,  on  hearing  a  woman  even 
utter  such  words,  they  look  round  expecting  to  see  her 
child  in  some  situation  of  danger.  But  in  France  "C/W.'"' 
and  "0  moil  Dieu!'''  are  uttered  by  every  woman  if  a 
mouse  does  but  run  across  the  floor.  There  is  much 
suggestive  truth  in  this.  By  tlie  habitual  use  of  strong 
language    men    may    blunt  and    petrify  their    feelings,  as 


190  AVOKDS;    TIIKIll    LJiE    AND    ABUSE. 

surely  as  by  the  excessive  use  of  alcoholic  stiniulanLs  they 
may  deaden  tlie  sensibility  of  the  palate.  "  Naturally  the 
strongest  word  ought  to  be  used  to  give  expression  to  the 
strongest  feeling.  But  strong  words  have  been  so  blunted 
through  frequent  use  that  they  have  lost  their  sharp  edge, 
and  pass  over  our  thick  skin  without  even  pricking  our 
sensibility;  while,  at  moments  when  we  expect  a  heavy 
blow,  the  light  tickling  of  the  socially  polite  feather  may 
far  more  vividly  stimulate  our  sensibility." 

It  is  a  law  of  oratory,  and  indeed  of  all  discourse, 
whether  oral  or  written,  that  it  is  the  subdued  expression 
of  conviction  and  feeling,  when  the  speaker  or  writer,  in- 
stead of  giving  vent  to  his  emotions,  veils  them  in  part, 
and  suffers  only  glimpses  of  them  to  be  seen,  that  is  the 
most  powerful.  It  is  the  man  who  is  all  hut  mastered 
by  his  excitement,  but  who,  at  the  very  point  of  being 
mastered,  masters  himself, —  apparently  cool  when  he  is 
at  a  white  heat, —  whose  eloquence  is  most  conquering. 
When  the  speaker,  using  a  gentler  mode  of  expression 
than  the  case  might  warrant,  appears  to  stifle  his  feelings 
and  studiously  to  keep  them  within  bounds,  a  reaction  is 
produced  in  the  hearer's  mind,  and,  rushing  into  the 
opposite  extreme,  he  is  moved  more  deeply  than  b}'  the 
most  vehement  and  passionate  declamation.  The  jets  of 
flame  that  escape  now  and  then, —  the  suppressed  bursts 
of  feeling, —  the  partial  eruptions  of  passion, —  are  regarded 
as  but  hints  or  faint  intimations  of  the  volcano  ^vithin. 
Balzac,  in  one  of  his  tales,  tells  of  an  artist,  who,  by  a 
few  touches  of  his  pencil,  could  give  to  a  most  common- 
place scene  an  air  of  overpowering  horror,  and  throw  over 
the  most  ordinary  and  prosaic  objects  a  spectral  air  of 
crime  and  blood.     Through  a  half-opened  door  you  see  a 


SOME   ABUSES   OF   AVORDS.  191 

bed  with  the  clothes  confusedly  heaped,  as  in  some  death- 
struggle,  over  an  undefined  object  which  fancy  whispers 
must  be  a  bleeding  corpse;  on  the  floor  yon  see  a  slipper, 
an  upset  candlestick,  and  a  knife  perhaps;  and  these 
hints  tell  the  story  of  blood  more  significantly  and  more 
powerfully  than  the  most  elaborate  detail,  because  the 
imagination  of  man  is  more  powerful  than  art  itself. 
So  with  Hood's  description  of  the  Haunted  House: — 

"Over  all  there  luiiig  a  cloud  of  fear; 

A  sense  of  mystery  the  spirit  daunted, 
And  said,  as  plain  as  whisper  to  the  car, 
'The  place  is  hauntedl'" 

Thoreau,  describing  an  interview  he  had  at  Concord 
with  John  Brown,  notices  as  one  of  the  latter's  marked 
peculiarities,  that  he  did  not  overstate  anything,  but  spoke 
within  bounds,  "He  referred  to  what  his  family  had 
suffered  in  Kansas,  without  ever  giving  the  least  vent  to 
his  pent-up  fire.  It  teas  a  volcano  tvith  an  ordinary 
rliinuieij-JfHe.'''  In  one  of  the  published  letters  of  the  late 
Rev.  F.  W.  Robertson,  there  are  some  admirable  comments 
on  a  letter,  full  of  strongly  expressed  religious  sentiments, 
pious  resolutions,  etc.,  which  he  had  received  from  a 
fashionable  lady.  The  letter,  he  says,  "is  in  earnest  so 
far  as  it  goes;  only  tliat  fatal  fan'h'tj/  of  strong  words 
expresses  feeling  which  will  seek  for  itself  no  other  ex- 
pression. She  believes  or  means  what  she  says,  but  the 
very  vehemence  of  the  expression  injures  her,  for  really 
it  expresses  the  penitence  of  a  St.  Peter,  and  would  not 
be  below  the  mark  if  it  were  meant  to  describe  the  bit- 
ter tears  with  which  he  bewailed  his  crime;  but  when 
such  language  is  used  for  trifles,  there  remains  nothing 
stronger  for    the  airfid    crises  of    human   life.     It  is  like 


192  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

Draco's* code, —  death  for  larceny;   and  there   remains   for 
parricide  or  treason  onl\'  death." 

Let  us  then  be  as  chary  of  our  superlatives  as  of  our 
Sunday  suit.  Hai'dly  a  greater  mistake  can  be  made  in 
regard  to  expression,  than  to  suppose  that  a  uniform 
intensity  of  style  is  a  [)roof  of  mental  power.  So  far  is 
this  from  being  true,  that  it  may  safely  be  said  that  such 
intensity  not  only  implies  a  want  of  truthfulness  and  sim- 
plicity, but  even  of  earnestness  and  real  force.  Intensity 
is  not  a  characteristic  of  nature,  in  spirit  or  in  matter. 
The  surface  of  the  earth  is  not  made  up  of  mountains  and 
valleys,  but,  for  the  most  part,  of  gentle  undulations.  The 
ocean  is  not  always  in  a  rage,  but,  if  not  calm,  its  waves 
rise  and  fall  with  gentle  fluctuation.  Hurricanes  and 
tempests  are  the  extraordinary,  not  the  iJRual,  conditions 
of  our  atmosphere.  Not  only  the  strongest  thinkers,  but 
the  most  powerful  orators,  have  been  distinguished  rather 
for  moderation  than  for  exaggeration  in  expression.  The 
great  secret  of  Daniel  Webster's  strength  as  a  speaker  lay 
in  the  fact  that  he  made  it  a  practice  to  understate  rather 
than  to  overstate  his  confidence  in  the  force  of  his  own 
arguments,  and  in  the  logical  necessity  of  his  conclusions. 
The  sober  and  solid  tramp  of  his  style  reflected  the  move- 
ments of  an  intellect  that  palpably  respected  the  relations 
and  dimensions  of  things,  and  to  which  exaggeration 
would  have  been  an  immorality.  Holding  that  violence 
of  language  is  evidence  of  feebleness  of  thought  and 
lack  of  reasoning  power,  he  kept  his  auditor  constantly  in 
advance  of  him,  by  suggestion  rather  than  by  strong  assev- 
eration, and  by  calmly  stating  the  facts  that  ought  to 
move  the  heai-er,  instead  of  by  making  passionate  appeals, 
the  man  being  always  felt  to  be  greater  than  the  man's 


SOME    ABUSES    OF    WORDS.  193 

feelings.     Such  has  been  the  metliod  of  all  great  rhetori- 
cians of  ancient  and  modern  times. 

The  most  effective  speakers  are  not  those  wlio  tell  all 
they  think  or  feel,  but  those  who,  by  maintaining  an 
austere  conscientiousness  of  phrase,  leave  on  their  hearers 
the  impression  of  reserved  power.  Great  bastions  of  mili- 
tary strength  must  lie  at  rest  in  times  of  peace,  that  they 
may  be  able  to  execute  their  destructive  agencies  in  times 
of  war;  and  so  let  it  be  with  the  superlatives  of  our 
tongue.  Never  call  on  the  "  tenth  legion,"  or  "  the  old 
guard,"  except  on  occasions  corresponding  to  the  dignity 
and  weight  of  those  tremendous  forces.  Say  plain  things 
in  a  plain  way,  and  then,  when  you  have  occasion  to  send 
a  sharp  arrow  at  your  enemy,  you  will  not  find  your 
quiver  empty  of  shafts  which  you  wasted  before  they 
were  wanted. 

"You  should  not  speak  to  think,  nor  think  to  speak; 
But  words  and  thoughts  should  of  themselves  outwcll 
From  inner  fulness;  chest  and  heart  should  swell 
To  give  them  birth.    Better  be  dumb  a  week 
Than  idly  prattle;  better  in  leisure  sleek 
Lie  fallow-niiudfd,  than  a  brain  compel 
To  wasting  plenty  that  hatli  yielded  well, 
Or  strive  to  croj)  a  soil  too  thin  and  bleak. 
One  true  thought,  from  tlie  deepest  heart  upspringing, 
May  from  within  a  whole  life  fertilize; 
One  true  word,  like  the  lightning  sudden  gleaming, 
May  rend  the  night  of  a  whcfle  world  of  lies. 
Much  speech,  much  thought,  may  often  be  but  seeming, 
But  in  one  truth  might  boundless  ever  lies." 


CHAPTER  VIT. 

SAXOX    WORDS,    OR    ROMANIC? 

I  cannot  adniiro  tlic  constant  use  of  French  or  Latin  words,  instead  of 
your  own  vernacular.  My  Anglo-Saxon  feelings  are  wounded  to  the  quick  .  .  . 
by  such  words  as  chagrin  instead  of  "grief,"  wai^rfic/iow  instead  of  "curse," 
etc.— Count  De  Montalembebt,  in  letter  to  Mrs.  Oliphant. 

The  devil  does  not  care  for  your  dialectics  and  eclectic  homiletics,  or 
Germanic  objectives  and  subjectives;  but  pelt  him  with  Anglo-Saxon  in  the 
name  of  God,  and  he  will  shift  his  quarters.— Rev.  C.  H.  Spurgeon. 

Words  have  their  proper  places,  just  like  men; 
We  listen  to,  not  venture  to  reprove. 
Large  language  swelling  under  gilded  domes, 
Byzantine,  Syrian,  Persepolitan.— Laxdor. 

TT  is  a  question  of  deep  interest  to  all  public  speakei'S 
-*-  and  writers,  and  one  which  has  provoked  not  a  little 
discussion  of  late  years,  whether  the  Saxon  or  the  Romanic 
part  of  our  language  should  be  preferred  b}^  those  who 
would  employ  "the  Queen's  English"  with  potency  and 
effect.  Of  late  it  has  been  the  fashion  to  cr}-  up  the 
native  element  at  the  expense  of  the  foreign;  and  among 
the  champions  of  the  former  we  may  name  Dr.  Whewell, 
of  Cambridge,  and  a  modern  rector  of  the  University  of 
Glasgow,  whom  De  Quincey  censures  for  an  erroneous 
direction  to  the  students  to  that  effect.  We  may  also 
add  Lord  Stanley, —  one  of  the  most  brilliant  and  pol- 
ished speakers  in  the  British  Parliament, —  who,  in  an 
address  some  years  ago  to  the  students  of  the  same 
university,  after  expressing  his  surprise  that  so  few  per- 
sons, comiiarativel}^,  in  Great  Britain,  have  acquainted 
themselves  with   the  origin,  the  history,  and   the   gradual 

194 


SAXON    WORDS,    OR    ROMANIC?  195 

development  of  that  mother  tongue  which  is  already 
spoken  over  half  the  world,  which  is  destined  to  yet 
iurther  geographical  extension,  and  which  embodies  many 
of  the  noblest  thoughts  that  have  ever  issued  from  the 
brain  of  man, —  adds:  "Depend  upon  it,  it  is  the  plain 
Saxon  phrase,  not  the  term  borrowed  from  Greek  or 
Roman  literature,  that,  whether  in  speech  or  writing,  goes 
straightest  and  strongest  to  men's  heads  and  hearts."  On 
the  other  hand  "the  Opium-Eater,"  commenting  on  a  re- 
mark of  Coleridge  that  Wordsworth's  "  Excursion  "  bristles 
beyond  most  poems  with  polysyllabic  words  of  Greek  or 
Latin  origin,  asserts  that  so  must  it  ever  be  in  meditative 
poetry  upon  solemn,  philosophic  themes.  The  gamut  of 
ideas  needs  a  corresponding  gamut  of  expressions;  the 
scale  of  the  thinking,  which  ranges  through  every  key, 
exacts  for  the  artist  an  unlimited  command  over  the 
entire  scale  of  the  instrument  he  employs. 

It  has  been  computed,  he  adds,  that  the  Italian  opera 
has  not  above  six  hundred  words  in  its  whole  vocabulai'y; 
so  narrow  is  the  range  of  its  emotions,  and  so  little  are 
those  emotions  disposed  to  expand  themselves  into  any 
variety  of  thinking.  The  same  remark  applies  to  that 
class  of  simple,  household,  homely  passion,  which  belongs 
to  the  early  ballad  poetry.  "  Pass  from  these  narrow 
fields  of  the  intellect,  where  the  relations  of  the  objects 
are  so  few  and  simple,  and  the  whole  prospect  so  bounded, 
to  the  immeasurable  and  sea-like  arena  upon  which 
Shakespeare  careers, —  co-infinite  with  life  itself, —  yes, 
and  with  something  more  than  life.  Here  is  the  other 
pole,  the  opposite  extreme.  And  what  is  the  choice  of 
diction?  What  is  the  lexis?  Is  it  Saxon  exclusively,  or 
is  it  Saxon  by  preference?     So  far  from  that,  the  Latinity 


196  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

is  intense, —  not,  indeed,  in  liLs  construction,  but  in  Lis 
choice  of  words;  and  so  continually  are  these  Latin  words 
used,  with  a  critical  respect  to  their  earliest  (and  where 
that  happens  to  have  existed,  to  their  unfigurative)  mean- 
ing, that,  upon  this  one  argument  I  would  rely  for  upset- 
ting the  else  impregnable  thesis  of  Dr.  Farmer  as  to 
Shakespeare's  learning.  .  .  These  '  dictionary  '  words  are 
indispensable  to  a  writer,  not  only  in  the  proi)ortion  by 
which  he  transcends  other  writers  as  to  extent  and  as  to 
subtlety  of  thinking,  but  also  as  to  elevation  and  sub- 
limity. Milton  was  not  an  extensive  or  discursive 
thinker,  as  Shakespeare  was;  for  the  motions  of  his  mind 
were  slow,  solemn,  sequacious,  like  those  of  the  planets; 
not  agile  and  assimilative;  not  attracting  all  things  into 
its  sphere;  not  multiform;  repulsion  was  the  law  of  his 
intellect, —  he  moved  in  solitarj^  grandeur.  Yet,  merely 
from  this  quality  of  grandeur, —  unapproachable  gran- 
deur,— his  intellect  demanded  a  larger  infusion  of  Latinity 
into  his  diction."  De  Quincey  concludes,  therefore,  that 
the  true  scholar  will  manifest  a  partiality  for  neither  part 
of  the  language,  but  will  be  governed  in  his  choice  of 
words  by  the  theme  he  is  handling. 

This  we  believe  to  be  the  true  answer  to  the  question. 
The  English  language  has  a  special  dowry  of  power  in 
its  double-headed  origin:  the  Saxon  part  of  the  language 
fulfils  one  set  of  functions;  the  Latin,  another.  Neither 
is  good  or  bad  absolutely,  but  only  in  its  relation  to  its 
subject,  and  according  to  the  treatment  which  the  subject 
is  meant  to  receive.  The  Saxon  has  nerve,  terseness,  and 
simplicity;  it  smacks  of  life  and  experience,  and  "puts 
small  and  convenient  handles  to  things, —  handles  that 
are  easy  to  grasp;"  but  it  has  neither  height  nor  breadth 


SAXON   WORDS,    OR    ROMANIC?  197 

for  every  theme.  To  confine  ourselves  to  it  would  be, 
therefore,  a  most  egregious  error.  The  truth  is,  it  is  no 
one  element  which  constitutes  the  power  and  efficiency  of 
our  noble  and  expressive  tongue,  but  the  great  multitude 
and  the  rich  variety  of  the  elements  which  enter  into  its 
composition.  Its  architectural  order  is  neither  Doric, 
Ionic,  nor  Corinthian,  but  essentially  composite;  a  splen- 
did mosaic,  to  the  formation  of  which  many  ancient  and 
modern  languages  have  contributed;  defective  in  unity 
and  symmetrical  grace  of  proportion,  but  of  vast  resources 
and  of  immense  power.  With  such  a  wealth  of  words  at 
our  command,  to  confine  ourselves  to  the  pithy  but  lim- 
ited Saxon,  or  to  emplo}'  it  chiefly,  would  be  to  practise 
a  foolish  economy, —  to  be  poor  in  the  midst  of  plenty, 
like  the  raiser  ainid  his  money  bags.  All  experiments 
of  this  kind  will  fail  as  truly,  if  not  as  signally,  as  that 
of  Charles  James  Fox,  who,  an  intense  admirer  of  the 
Saxon,  attempted  to  portray  in  that  dialect  the  revolution 
of  1688,  and  produced  a  book  which  his  warmest  admirers 
admitted  to  be  meagre,  dry,  and  spiritless, —  without  pic- 
turesqueness,  color,  or  cadence. 

It  is  true  that  within  a  certain  limited  and  narrow 
circle  of  ideas,  we  can  get  along  with  Saxon  words  very 
well.  The  loftiest  poetry,  the  most  fervent  devotion, 
even  the  most  earnest  and  impassioned  oratory,  may  all 
be  expressed  in  words  almost  purely  Teutonic;  but  the 
moment  we  come  to  the  abstract  and  the  technical, —  to 
discussion  and  speculation, —  we  cannot  stir  a  step  with- 
out drawing  on  foreign  sources.  Simple  narrative, —  a 
pathos  resting  upon  artless  circumstances, —  elementary 
feelings, —  homely  and  household  affections, —  these  are  ail 
most  happily  expressed  by  the  old  Saxon  vocabulary;  but 


198  WORDS;    THEIR    USE   AND    ABUSE. 

a  passion  which  rises  into  grandeur,  which  is  complex, 
elaborate,  and  interveined  with  high  meditative  feelings, 
would  languish  or  absolutely  halt,  without  aid  from  the 
Romanic  part  of  the  vocabulary.  If  Anglo-Saxon  is  the 
fi'amework  or  skeleton  of  our  language,  the  spine  on 
which  the  structure  of  our  speech  is  hung, —  if  it  is  the 
indispensable  medium  of  familiar  converse  and  the  busi- 
ness of  life, —  it  no  more  fills  out  the  full  and  rounded 
otitline  of  our  language,  than  the  skeleton,  nerves,  and 
sinews  form  the  whole  of  the  human  body.  It  is  the 
classical  contributions,  the  hundreds  and  thousands  of 
Romanic  words  which  during  and  since  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury have  found  a  home  in  our  English  speech,  that  have 
furnished  its  spiritual  conceptions,  and  endowed  the  mate- 
rial body  with  a  living  soul. 

These  words  would  never  have  been  adopted,  had  they 
not  been  absolutely  necessary  to  express  new  modes  and 
combinations  of  thought.  xVs  children  of  softer  climes 
and  gentler  aspect  than  our  harsh  but  pithy  Teutonic 
terms,  they  have  been  received  into  the  English  family  of 
words,  and  add  grace  and  elegance  to  the  speech  that  has 
adopted  them.  The  language  has  gained  immensely  b}'^ 
the  infusion,  not  only  in  richness  of  synonym  and  the 
power  of  expressing  nice  shades  of  thought  and  feeling, 
but,  more  than  all,  in  light-footed  polysyllables  tliat  trip 
singing  to  the  music  of  verse.  If  the  saying  of  Shake- 
speare, that 

"  The  learned  pate  ducks  to  the  goldeu  fool," 

is  more  expressive  than  it  would  be  if  couched  in  Latin 
words,  would  not  the  fine  thought  that 

"Nice  customs  courtesy  to  kings," 

be   greatly  injured    by  substituting    any  other  words    for 


SAXOX    WORDS,    OK    ROMAXIC?  199 

"nice"  and  "courtesy"?  Because  Shakespeare's  '"oak- 
cleaving  thunderbolts"  is  so  admirable,  shall  we  fail  to 
appreciate  Milton's  "  fulmined  over  Greece,"  where  the 
idea  of  flash  and  reverberation  is  conveyed,  without  that 
of  riving  and  shattering?  It  has  been  observed  that 
Wordsworth's  famous  ode,  "  Intimations  of  Immortality," 
translated  into  "  Hints  of  Deathlessness,"  would  hiss  like 
an  angry  gander.     Instead  of  Shakespeare's 

"Age  cannot  wither  her. 
Nor  custom  stale  her  infinite  variety," 

say  "her  boundless  manifoldness,"  an\l  would  not  the  sen- 
timent suffer  in  exact  proportion  with  the  music?  With 
what  terms  equally  expressive  would  you  sujjply  the  place 
of  such  words  as  the  long  ones  blended  with  the  short  in 
the  exclamation  of  the  horror-stricken  Macbeth?  — 

"Will  all  great  Neptune's  ocean  wash  this  blood 
Clean  from  my  hand?    Xol   this  my  hand  will  rather 
The  multitudinous  sea  incarnadme, 
Maliing  the  green  one  red." 

As  the  poet  Lowell  justly  asks,  could  anything  be  more 
expressive  than  the  huddling  epithet  which  here  implies 
the  tempest-tossed  soul  of  the  speaker,  and  at  the  same  time 
pictures  the  wallowing  waste  of  ocean  more  vividly  than 
does  ^schylus  its  rippling  sunshine?  "'Multitudinous 
sea,' — what  an  expression!  You  feel  the  wide  weltering 
waste  of  confused  and  tumbling  waves  around  you  in 
that  single  word.  What  beaiity  and  wealth  of  color  too 
in  '  incarnadine,'  a  word  capable  of  dyeing  an  ocean !  and 
then,  after  these  grand  polysyllables,  how  terse  and  stern 
comes  in  the  solid  Saxon,  as  if  a  vast  cloud  had  condensed 
into  great  heavy  drops, —  the  deep  one  red."*  Is  it  not 
plain  that  if  you  substitute  any  less  massive  words  for  the 

♦  W.  W.  Story. 


^00  words;    TlIElIt    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

sesqiupedalia  verba,  the  sonorous  terms  "multitudinous" 
and  "  incarnadine,"  the  whole  grandeur  of  the  passage 
would  collapse  at  once? 

Among  the  British  orators  of  this  century  few  have 
had  a  greater  command  of  language,  or  used  it  with  nicer 
discrimination,  than  Canning.  What  can  be  happier  than 
the  blending  of  the  native  and  the  foreign  elements  in 
the  following  eloquent  passage?  Most  of  the  italicized 
words  are  Saxon: 

"Our  present  repose  is  no  more  a  proof  of  our  inability  to  act  than  tlie 
elate  of  inertness  and  inactivity  in  wliich  I  have  seen  those  mighty  masses 
that  float  in  the  icaters  above  your  town  is  a  proof  that  they  are  devoid  of 
strength  or  incapable  of  being  fitted  for  action.  You  well  know,  gentlemen, 
how  soon  one  of  those  stupendous  masses  now  reposing  on  their  shadotes  in 
■perfect  stillness  —  how  soon,  upon  any  call  of  patriotism  or  of  necessity,  it 
would  assume  the  likeness  of  aa  animated  thing,  instinct  with  life  and  motion— 
how  soon  it  U'ould  ruffle,  as  it  were,  its  swelling  plumage  —  how  quick'y  it  ivoitld 
put  forth  all  its  beauty  and  its  bravery,  collect  its  scattered  t]tm(iuts  of  strength, 
and  aivake  its  dormant  thunders.  Such  as  is  one  of  those  magnificent  machines 
when  springing  from  inaction  into  a  display  of  its  strength,  such  is  England 
itself,  while,  apparently  passive  and  motionless,  she  silently  causes  her  power 
to  be  put  forth  on  an  adequate  occasion."' 

In  the  famous  passage  in  Sterne's  "  Tristram  Shand}-," 
which  has  been  pronounced  ,the  most  musical  in  our  lan- 
guage, nearly  all  the  words  are  Saxon: 

"The  accusing  spirit  that  flew  up  to  Heaven's  chancery  with  the  oath, 
blushed  as  he  gave  it  in,  and  the  recording  angel,  as  he  wrote  it  dowu,  dropped 
a  tear  upon  the  word,  and  blotted  it  out  forever." 

On  the  other  hand,  in  the  following  passage  from 
Napier's  history  of  the  Peninsular  War, —  in  which  the 
impetuosity  of  the  style  almost  rivals  that  of  the  soldiers  it 
describes,  and  in  reading  which  we  seem  almost  to  hear  the 
tramp  and  the  shouts  of  the  charging  squadrons,  and  the 
sharp  rattle  of  the  musketry, —  how  indispensable  to  the 
effect  of  the  description  are  the  Romance  words,  which  we 
have  italicized: 


SAXON    WORDS,    OR    ROMANIC?  201 

"Suddenly  and  sternly  recovering,  they  closed  on  their  terrible  enemies:  and 
then  was  seen  with  wliat  a  strength  and  majesty  the  British  soldier  fights.  In 
vain  did  Soult,  by  voice  and  gesture,  animate  his  Frenchmen;  in  vain  did  the 
hardiest  veterans,  extncating  themselves  from  the  crowded  columns,  sacrifice 
tlieir  lives  to  gain  time  for  the  mass  to  oi)en  out  on  such  a  fair  field;  in 
vain  did  the  mass  itself  bear  up,  and,  fiercely  striving,  fire  indiscriminate  ij 
upon  friends  and  foes,  while  the  horsemen  hovering  on  tlie  Jlank  threatened  to 
charge  Ihu  advancing  Wno.  Notliing  could  stop  thM  astonishing  infantry;  no 
sudden  burst  of  undisciplined  valor,  no  nervous  enthusiasm,  weakened  the  .s'^rt- 
bility  of  their  order;  their  flashing  eyes  were  bent  on  the  dark  columns  in  their 
front;  their  measured  tread  shook  the  ground;  their  dreadful  volleys  swept 
away  the  head  of  every  formation;  their  deafening  shouts  overpowered  the 
different  cries  that  broke  from  all  parts  of  the  tumultuous  crowd,  as,  foot  by 
foot,  and  with  a  horrid  carnage,  it  was  driven  by  the  incessant  vigor  of  the 
attack  to  the  furthest  edge  of  the  hill.  In  vain  did  the  French  reserves,  joining 
with  the  struggling  multitudes,  endeavor  to  sustain  the  fight;  X\\e\v  efforts  only 
increased  the  irremediable  confusion,  and  the  mighty  mass,  giving  way  like  a 
loosened  cliff,  went  headlong  down  the  ascent.  The  rain  poured  after  in  streams 
discolored  with  blood,  and  fifteen  hundred  unwounded  men,  the  lemnant  of  six 
thousand  unconquerable  British  soldiers,  stood  triumphant  on  the  fatal  field." 

It  is  true,  as  we  have  already  said,  that  the  Saxon  has 
the  advantage  of  being  the  aboriginal  element,  the  basis, 
and  not  the  superstructure,  of  the  language;  it  is  the  dia- 
lect of  the  nursery,  and  its  words  therefore,  being  conse- 
crated to  the  feelings  by  early  use,  are  full  of  secret 
suggestions  and  echoes,  which  greatly  multiply  their  power. 
Its  words,  though  not  intrinsically,  yet  to  us,  from  associa- 
tion, are  more  concrete  and  pictorial  than  those  derived 
from  the  Latin;  and  this  is  particularly  true  of  many  beau- 
tiful words  we  have  lost.  How  much  more  expressive  to 
us  is  "sea-robber"  than  "pirate";  "sand- waste"  than 
"desert";  "eye-bite"  than  "fascinate";  "mill-race"  than 
"  channel  " ;  "  water-fright "  than  "  hydrophobia  " ;  "  moon- 
ling  "than  "lunatic";  "show-holiness"  than  "hypocrisy"; 
"in-wit"  than  "conscience";  "gold-hoard"  than  "treas- 
ure"; "ship-craft"  than  "the  art  of  navigation";  "hand- 
cloth"  than  "towel";  "book-craft"  than  "literature"! 
Therefore,  as  De  Quincey  says,  "  wherever  the  passion  of  a 
poem  is  of  that  sort  which  uses.  ^^resKines,  or  j^osfithttcs  the 


202  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

ideas,  without  seeking  to  extend  thcni,  Saxon  will  be  llie 
'cocoon'  (to  speak  by  the  language  applied  to  silk-worms  ), 
which  the  poem  spins  for  itself.  But  on  the  other  band, 
where  the  motion  of  the  feeling  is  by  and  through  the  ideas, 
where  (as  in  religious  or  meditative  poetry, —  Young's,  for 
instance,  or  Cowper's)  the  pathos  creeps  and  kindles  under- 
neath the  very  tissues  of  the  thinking, —  there  the  Latin  will 
predominate;  and  so  much  so  that,  while  the  flesh,  the 
blood,  and  the  muscle  will  be  often  almost  exclusively  Latin, 
the  articulations  only,  or  hinges  of  connection,  will  be 
Anglo-Saxon." 

Let  us  be  thankful,  then,  that  our  language  has  other 
elements  than  the  Saxon,  admirable  as  that  is.  The  circum- 
stances under  which  this  element  had  its  origin  were  such 
as  to  impart  strength  rather  than  beauty  or  elegance.  The 
language  of  our  continental  forefathers  was  the  language 
of  fierce  bax'barians,  hemmed  in  by  other  barbarous  tribes, 
and  having  no  intercourse  with  foreign  nations,  except 
when  roving  as  sea  wolves  to  plunder  and  destroy.  It  was 
the  speech  of  a  taciturn  people  living  only  in  gloomy 
forests  and  on  stormy  seas,  and  was  naturally,  therefore, 
harsh  and  monosyllabic.  It  was  full,  nevertheless,  of  pithy, 
bold,  and  vigorous  expressions,  and  needed  only  that  its 
hardy  stock  should  receive  the  grafts  of  sunnier  and  softer 
climes,  to  bear  abundant  and  beautiful  fruit.  Let  us  be 
thankful  that  this  union  took  place.  Let  us  be  grateful  for 
that  inheritance  of  collateral  wealth,  which,  by  engrafting 
our  Anglo-Saxon  stem  with  the  mixed  dialect  of  Normandy, 
caused  ultimately  the  whole  opulence  of  Roman,  and  even 
of  Grecian  thought,  to  play  freely  through  the  veins  of  our 
native  tongue.  No  doubt  the  immediate  result  was  any- 
thing but  pleasant.     For  a  long  time  after  the  language 


SAXOX   WORDS,    OR    ROMAXIC?  203 

was  thrown  again  into  the  crucible,  Britons.  Saxons  and 
Normans  talked  a  jargon  fit  neither  for  gods  nor  men.  It 
was  a  chaos  of  language,  hissing,  sputtering,  bubbling  like 
a  witch's  caldron.  But  luckily  the  Saxon  element  was  yet 
plastic  and  unfrozen,  so  that  the  new  elements  could  fuse 
with  its  own,  thus  forming  that  wondrous  instrument  of 
expression  which  we  now  enjoy,  fitted  fully  to  reflect  the' 
thoughts  of  the  myriad-minded  Shakespeare,  yet,  at  the 
same  time,  with  enough  remaining  of  its  old  forest  stamina 
for  imparting  a  masculine  depth  to  the  sublimities  of 
Milton  or  the  Hebrew  prophets,  and  to  the  Historic  Scrip- 
tures that  patriarchal  simplicity  which  is  one  of  their 
greatest  charms. 

We  are  aware  that,  in  reply  to  all  this,  it  may  be 
asked,  "Are  not  ninety-three  words  out  of  every  hundred 
in  the  Bible  Anglo-Saxon;  and  where  are  the  life,  beauty 
and  freshness  of  our  language  to  be  found  in  so  heaped 
a  measure  as  in  that  'pure  well  of  English,'  the  Bible?" 
Nothing  can  be  plainer  or  simpler  than  its  vocabulary, 
yet  how  rich  is  it  in  all  that  concerns  the  moral,  the 
spiritual,  and  even  the  intellectual  interests  of  humanity! 
Is  it  logic  that  we  ask?  What  a  range  of  abstract 
thought,  what  an  armory  of  dialectic  weapons,  what  an 
enginery  of  vocal  implements  for  moving  the  soul,  do 
we  find  in  the  epistles  of  St.  Paul!  Is  it  rhetoric  that 
we  require?  "Where,"  in  the  language  of  South,  "do 
we  find  such  a  natural  prevailing  pathos  as  in  the  lam- 
entations of  Jeremiah?  One  would  think  that  every  letter 
was  written  with  a  tear,  every  word  was  the  noise  of  a 
breaking  heart;  that  the  author  was  a  man  compacted 
of  sorrow,  disciplined  to  grief  from  his  infancy,  one  who 
never  breathed  but  in  sighs,  nor  spoke   but  in  a  groan." 


204  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

Yet,  while  our  translation  owes  much  of  its  l>cauty  to 
the  Saxon,  there  are  passages  the  grandeur  of  which 
would  be  greatly  diminished  by  the  substitution  of  Saxon 
words  for  the  Latin  ones.  In  the  following  the  Latin 
words  italicized  are  absolutely  necessary  to  preserve  one 
of  the  sublimest  rhythms  of  the  Bible:  "And  I  heard, 
as  it  were,  the  voice  of  a  great  multitude,  and  as  the 
voice  of  many  waters,  and  as  the  voice  of  mighty  thun- 
derings,  saying,  '  Alleluia,  for  the  Lord  God  Omnipotent 
reigneth.^ " 

The  truth  is,  the  translators  of  the  Bible,  while  they 
have  employed  a  large  percentage  of  Saxon  words,  have 
hit  the  golden  mean  in  their  version,  never  hesitating  to 
use  a  Latin  word  when  the  sense  or  the  rhythm  demanded 
it;  and  hence  we  have  the  entire  volume  of  revelation 
in  the  happiest  form  in  which  human  wit  and  learning 
have  ever  made  it  accessible  to  man.  This  an  English 
Catholic  writer,  a  convert  from  the  Anglican  church,  has 
mournfully  acknowledged,  in  the  following  touching  pas- 
sage:— "Who  will  not  say  that  the  uncommon  beauty  and 
marvellous  English  of  the  Protestant  Bible  is  one  of 
the  great  strongholds  of  heresy  in  this  country?  It  lives 
on  the  ear,  like  a  miasic  that  can  never  be  forgotten, 
like  the  sound  of  church  bells,  which  the  convert  hardly 
knows  how  he  can  forego.  Its  felicities  often  seem  to  be 
almost  things  rather  than  mere  words.  It  is  part  of 
the  national  mind,  and  the  anchor  of  national  serious- 
ness. .  .  The  memory  of  the  dead  passes  into  it.  The 
potent  traditions  of  childhood  are  stereotyped  in  its  verses. 
The  power  of  all  the  griefs  and  trials  of  a  man  is  hidden 
beneath  its  words.  It  is  the  representative  of  his  best 
moments,  and  all  that  there   has  been  about  him   of  soft 


SAXOX    WORDS,    OR    ROMAXIC?  205 

and  gentle,  and  pure  and  penitent  and  good,  speaks  to 
hiin  forever  out  of  his  English  Bible.  It  is  his  sacred 
thincT,  which  doubt  has  never  dimmed,  and  controversy 
never  soiled.  .  .  In  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land 
there  is  not  a  Protestant  with  one  spark  of  religiousness 
about  him,  whose  spiritual  biography  is  not  in  his  Saxon 
Bible."* 

It  is  a  very  striking  and  suggestive  fact  that  those 
very  writers  who  award  the  palm  for  expressiveness  to 
the  Saxon  part  of  our  language,  cannot  extol  the  Saxon 
without  the  help  of  Latin  words.  Dr.  Gregory  tells  us 
that  when,  in  the  company  of  Robert  Hall,  he  chanced 
to  use  the  term  "  felicity "  three  or  four  times  in  rather 
quick  succession,  the  latter  asked  him:  "  Why  do  you  say 
'felicity'?  'Happiness'  is  a  better  word,  more  musical, 
and  genuine  English,  coming  from  the  Saxon."  "  Not 
more  musical,"  said  Dr.  Gregory.  "  Yes,  more  musical, 
—  and  so  are  all  words  derived  from  the  Saxon,  generally. 
Listen,  sir:  '  My  heart  is  smitten,  and  withered  like 
grass.'  There  is  plaintive  music.  Listen  again,  sir: 
'  Under  the  shadow  of  thy  wings  will  I  rejoice.'  There  is 
cheerful  music."  "Yes,  but  'rejoice'  is  French."  "True, 
but  all  the  rest  is  Saxon ;  and  '  rejoice '  is  almost  out  of 
time  with  the  other  words.  Listen  again:  'Thou  hast 
delivered  my  soul  from  death,  my  eyes  from  tears,  and 
my  feet  from  falling.'  All  Saxon,  sir,  except  'delivered.' 
I  could  think  of  the  word  '  tear'  till  I  wept."  But  whence 
did  Robert  Hall  get  the  words  "musical"  and  "  plaintive 
music"?  Are  they  not  from  the  Greek  and  the  French? 
Is  not  this  stabbing  a  man  with  his  own  weapons?  It 
is  a  curious  fact,  that,  in  spite  of  this  eulogy   on  Saxon 

*r.  W.  Faber,  in  "Dublin  Review,"  June,  1853. 


206  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

words,  a  more  than  ordinary  percentage  of  the  words 
used  in  Mr.  Hall's  writings  are  of  Romanic  origin. 
Again,  even  Macaulay,  one  of  the  most  brilliant  and 
powerful  of  all  English  writers,  finds  it  impossible  to 
laud  the  Saxon  part  of  the  language  without  borrowing 
nearly  half  the  words  of  his  famous  panegyric  from  the 
Romanic  part  of  the  vocabulary.  In  his  article  on  Bun- 
yan,  in  a  passage  written  in  studied  commendation  of 
the  "pure  old  Saxon"  English,  we  find,  omitting  the 
particles  and  wheelwork,  one  hundred  and  twenty-one 
words,  of  which  fifty-one,  or  over  forty-two  per  cent, 
are  classical  or  alien.  lu  other  words,  this  great  English 
writer,  than  whom  few  have  a  more  imperial  command 
over  all  the  resources  of  expression,  finds  the  Saxon 
insufficient  for  his  eloquent  eulogy  on  Saxon,  and  is 
obliged  to  borrow  four-tenths  of  his  words,  and  those  the 
most  emphatic  ones,  from  the  imported  stock! 

It  is  an  important  fact,  that  while  we  can  readily  frame 
a  sentence  wholly  of  Anglo-Saxon,  we  cannot  do  so  with 
words  entirely  Latin,  because  the  determinative  particles, — 
the  bolts,  pins,  and  hinges  of  the  structure, —  must  be 
Saxon.  Macaulay,  in  his  famous  contrast  of  Dr.  Johnson's 
conversational  language  with  that  of  his  writings,  has 
vividly  illustrated  the  superiority  of  a  Saxon-English  to  a 
highly  Latinized  diction.  "  The  expressions  which  came 
first  to  his  tongue  w-ere  simple,  energetic,  and  picturesque. 
When  he  wrote  for  publication,  he  did  his  sentences  out 
of  English  into  Johnsonese.  *  When  we  were  taken  i;p 
stairs,'  says  he  in  one  of  his  letters  from  -the  Hebrides, 
'a  dirty  fellow  bounced  out  of  the  bed  on  which  one  of 
us  was  to  lie.'  This  incident  is  recorded  in  his  published 
Journev  as    follows:    'Out  of  one   of  the  beds   on  which 


SAXOX    WOIIDS,    OR    ROMANIC?  207 

we  were  to  repose,  started  up,  at  our  entrance,  a  man  as 
black  as  a  Cyclops  from  the  forge.'  Sometimes,"  Macaulay 
adds,  "Johnson  translated  aloud.  '  The  Rehearsal,'  he  said, 
'has  not  wit  enough  to  keep  it  sweet;'  then,  after  a  pause, 
'  It  has  not  vitality  enough  to  preserve  it  from  putre- 
faction.' "  Doubtless  Johnson,  like  Robertson,  Hume,  and 
Gibbon,  thought  that  he  was  refining  the  language  by 
straining  it  through  the  lees  of  Latin  and  Greek,  so  as  to 
imbue  it  with  the  tone  and  color  of  the  learned  tongues, 
and  clear  it  of  the  barbarous  Saxon;  while  real  purity 
rather  springs  from  such  words  as  are  our  own,  and 
peculiar  to  our  fatherland.  Nevertheless,  the  elephantine 
diction  of  the  Doctor  proved,  in  the  end,  a  positive  bless- 
ing to  the  language;  for  by  pushing  the  artificial  or 
classic  system  to  an  extreme,  it  brought"  it  into  disrepute, 
and  led  men  to  cultivate  again  the  native  idiom. 

In  conclusion,  to  sum  up  our  views  of  the  matter,  we 
would  say  to  every  young  writer:  Give  no  fantastic 
preference  to  either  Saxon  or  Latin,  the  two  great  wings 
on  which  our  magnificent  English  soars  and  sings,  for  you 
can  spare  neither.  The  union  of  the  two  gives  us  an 
affluence  of  synonyms  and  a  nicety  of  discrimination  which 
no  homogeneous  tongue  can  boast.  To  know  how  to  use 
each  in  due  degree,  and  on  proper  occasions, —  when  to 
aim  at  vigor  and  when  at  refinement  of  expression, —  to 
be  energetic  without  coarseness,  and  polished  without 
affectation, —  is  the  highest  pi'oof  of  a  cultivated  taste. 
Never  use  a  Romanic  woi'd  when  a  Teutonic  one  will  do 
as  well;  for  the  former  carries  a  comparatively  cold  and 
conventional  signification  to  an  English  car.  Between  the 
sounding  Latin  and  the  homely,  idiomatic  Saxon,  there  is 
often  as  much  difference  in  respect  to  a  power  of  awaken- 


208  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

ing  associations,  as  between  a  gong  and  a  peal  of  village 
bells.  Pleasant  though  it  be  to  read  the  pages  of  one 
who  writes  in  a  foreign  tongue,  as  it  is  pleasant  to  visit 
distant  lands,  yet  there  is  always  the  charm  of  home,  with 
all  its  witchery,  in  the  good  old  Anglo-Saxon  of  our  fathers. 
Of  the  words  that  we  heard  in  our  childhood,  there  are 
some  which  have  stored  up  in  them  an  ineffable  sweet- 
ness and  flavor,  whi<!h  make  them  precious  ever  after; 
there  are  others  which  are  words  of  might,  of  power, — 
old,  brawny,  large-meaning  words,  heavily  laden  with 
associations, —  which,  when  they  strike  the  imagination, 
awaken  tender  and  tremulous  memories,  obscure,  subtle, 
and  yet  most  powerful.  The  orator  and  the  poet  can 
never  employ  these  terms  without  great  advantage;  their 
very  sound  is  often  a  spell  "to  conjure  withal."  Our 
language  is  essentially  Teutonic;  the  whole  skeleton  of  it 
is  thoroughly  so;  all  its  grammatical  forms,  all  its  most 
common  and  necessary  words,  are  still  identical  with  that 
old  mother  tongue  whose  varying  forms  lived  on  the  lips 
of  Arminius  and  of  Hengest,  of  Harold  of  Norway,  and 
of  Harold  of  England,  of  Alaric,  of  Alboin,  and  of  Charles 
the  Great.  On  the  other  hand,  never  scruple  to  use  a 
Romanic  word  when  the  Saxon  will  not  do  as  well;  that 
is,  do  not  over-Teutonize  from  any  archaic  pedantry,  but 
use  the  strongest,  the  most  picturesque,  or  the  most 
beautiful  word,  from  whatever  source  it  may  come.  The 
Latin  words,  though  less  home-like,  must  nevertheless  be 
deemed  as  truly  denizen  in  the  language  as  the  Saxon, — 
as  being  no  alien  interlopers,  but  possessing  the  full  right 
of  citizenship.  Some  of  them  came  so  early  into  the  lan- 
guage, and  are,  therefore,  so  thoroughly  naturalized,  that 
we   hardly  recognize   them    as    foreign  words,  unless    our 


SAXOX    WORDS,    OR    ROMANIC?  209 

attention  is  particularly  called  to  their  origin.  When  a 
person  speaks  of  "  paying  money  "  or  "  paying  a  del)t,"  we 
are  no  more  sensible  of  an  exotic  effect  than  if  he  had 
spoken  of  "  eating  bread,"  "  drinking  water,"  or  "  riding  a 
horse."  That  "pay"  is  derived  from  pacare,  "debt"  from 
debituin,  or  "  money  "  from  {Juno)  Moneta,  scarcely  suggests 
itself  even  to  the  scholar.  Perhaps  of  all  our  writers 
Shakespeare  may  be  deemed,  in  this  matter  of  the  choice 
of  woi'ds,  the  student's  best  friend.  No  one  better  knows 
how  far  the  Saxon  can  go,  or  so  often  taxes  its  utmost 
resources;  yet  no  one  better  knows  its  poverty  and  weak- 
ness; and,  therefore,  while  in  treating  homely  and  familiar 
themes  he  uses  simple  words,  and  shows,  by  his  total 
abstinence  from  Latin  words  in  some  of  his  most  beautiful 
passages,  that  he  understands  the  monosyllabic  music  of 
our  tongue,  yet  in  his  loftiest  flights  it  is  on  the  broad 
pinions  of  the  Roman  eagle  that  he  soars,  and  we  shall 
find,  if  we  regard  him  closely,  that  every  feather  is  plucked 
from  its  wing. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE   SECRET   OF    APT    WORDS. 

Le  style  c'cst  de  rhonimc. —  Buffon. 

Altogether  the  style  of  a  writer  is  a  faithful  representative  of  his  mind ; 
therefore  if  any  man  wish  to  write  a  clear  style,  let  him  first  be  clear  in  his 
thoughts;  and  if  he  would  write  in  a  noble  style,  let  him  first  possess  a  noble 
soul.  —  Goethe. 

No  noble  or  right  style  was  ever  yet  founded  but  out  of  a  sincere  heart. — 

RUSKIN. 

"TT  was  a  saying  of  the  wily  diplomatist,  Talleyrand,  that 
-*-  language  was  given  to  man  to  conceal  his  thought. 
There  is  a  class  of  writers  at  the  present  day  who  seem  to 
be  of  the  same  opinion, —  sham  philosophers  for  the  most 
part,  who  have  an  ambition  to  be  original  without  the 
capacity,  and  seek  to  gain  the  credit  of  soaring  to  the 
clouds  by  shrouding  familiar  objects  in  mist.  As  all  objects 
look  larger  in  a  fog,  so  their  thoughts  "loom  up  through 
the  haze  of  their  style  with  a  sort  of  dusky  magnificence 
that  is  mistaken  for  sublimity."  This  style  of  writing  is 
sometimes  called  "  transcendental  ";  and  if  by  this  is  meant 
that  it  transcends  all  the  established  laws  of  rhetoric,  and 
all  ordinary  powers  of  comprehension,  the  name  is  certainly 
a  happy  one.  It  is  a  remark  often  made  touching  these 
shallow-profound  authors,  "  What  a  pity  that  So-and-so 
does  not  express  thoughts  so  admirable  in  intelligible 
English!" — whereas,  in  fact,  but  for  the  strangeness  and 
obscurity  of  the  stylo,  which  fills  the  ear  while  it  famishes 
the  mind,  the  matter  would  seem  commonplace.  The  sim- 
ple truth  is,  that  the  profoundest  authors  are  always  the 

210 


THE   SECRET    OF   APT    WORDS.  211 

clearest,  and  the  chiaro-oscuro  which  these  transcendental- 
ists  affect,  instead  of  shrouding  thoughts  which  mankind 
cannot  well  afford  to  lose,  is  but  a  cloak  for  their  intel- 
lectual nakedness, —  the  convenient  shelter  for  meagreness 
of  thought  and  poverty  of  expression.  As  the  banks  and 
shoals  of  the  sea  are  the  ordinary  resting-place  of  fogs,  so  is 
it  with  thought  and  language;  the  cloud  almost  invariably 
indicates  the  shallow. 

But,  whether  language  be  or  be  not  fitted  to  cloak  our 
ideas,  as  Talleyrand  and  Voltaire  before  him  supjjosed, 
there  are  few  persons  to  whom  it  has  not  seemed  at  times 
inadequate  to  express  them.  How  many  ideas  occur  to  us 
in  our  daily  reflections,  which,  though  we  toil  after  them 
for  hours,  baffle  all  our  attempts  to  seize  them  and  render 
them  comprehensible?  Who  has  not  felt,  a  thousand  times, 
the  brushing  wings  of  great  thoughts,  as,  like  startled  birds, 
they  have  swept  by  him, —  thoughts  so  swift  and  so  many- 
hued  that  any  attempt  to  arrest  or  describe  them  seemed 
like  mockery?  How  common  it  is,  after  reflecting  on  some 
subject  in  one's  study,  or  a  lonely  walk,  till  the  whole  mind 
has  become  heated  and  filled  with  the  ideas  it  suggests,  to 
feel  a  descent  into  the  veriest  tameness  when  attempting  to 
embody  those  ideas  in  written  or  spoken  words!  A  thou- 
sand bright  images  lie  scattered  in  the  fancy,  but  we 
cannot  picture  them;  glimpses  of  glorious  visions  appear 
to  us,  but  we  cannot  arrest  them;  questionable  shapes  float 
by  us,  but,  when  we  question  them,  they  will  not  answer. 
Even  Byron,  one  of  the  greatest  masters  of  eloquent  expres- 
sion, who  was  able  to  condense  into  one  word,  that  fell 
like  a  thunderbolt,  the  power  and  anguish  of  emotion,  expe- 
rienced the  same  difficulty,  and  tells  us  in  lines  of  splendid 
declamation: 


212  words;  tiieiu  use  and  AmsE. 

"  Could  I  embody  and  iinbo^oin  now 
That  wliicli  is  most  within  me, —  could  I  wreak 
,  My  tlioiiglits  upon  expression,  and  thus  tluow 

I         Soul,  lieart,  mind,  jjassions,  feelings,  stronj^  or  weak, 
/  All  that  I  would  have  sought,  and  all  1  seek, 

Bear,  know,  feel,  and  yet  breathe, —  into  one  word, 
And  that  one  word  were  lightning,  I  would  speak; 
But,  as  it  is,  I  live  and  die  unheard. 
With  a  most  voiceless  thought,  sheathing  it  as  a  sword." 

So,  too,  that  great  verbal  artist,  Tennyson,  complains: 

'■I  sometimes  hold  it  half  a  sin 
To  put  in  words  the  grief  1  feel; 
For  words,  like  Nature,  half  reveal. 
And  half  conceal  the  soul  within." 

De  Quincey  ti-uly  remarks  that  all  our  thoughts  have 
not  words  corresponding  to  them  in  our  yet  imperfectly 
developed  nature,  nor  can  ever  express  themselves  in  acts, 
but  must  lie  appreciable  by  God  only,  like  the  silent  melo- 
dies in  a  great  musician's  heart,  never  to  roll  forth  from 
harp  or  organ. 

"The  sea  of  thought  is  a  boundless  sea. 
Its  brightest  gems  are  not  thrown  on  the  beach; 
The  waves  that  would  tell  of  the  mystery 
Die  and  fall  on  the  shore  of  speech." 

"  Thought,"  says  the  eloquent  Du  Ponceau,  "  is  vast  as 
the  air;  it  embraces  far  more  than  languages  can  express; 
—  or  rather,  languages  express  nothing,  they  only  make 
thought  flash  in  electric  sparks  from  the  speaker  to  the 
hearer.  A  single  word  creates  a  crowd  of  conceptions, 
which  the  intellect  combines  and  marshals  with  lightning- 
like rapidity." 

The  Germans  have  coined  a  phrase  to  characterize  a 
class  of  persons  who  have  conception  without  expression, — 
gifted,  thoughtful  men,  lovers  of  goodness  and  truth,  who 
have  no  lack  of  ideas,  but  who  hesitate  and  stammer  when 
they  would  put  them  into  language.     Such  men  they  term 


THE    SFXRET    OF    APT    WORDS.  213 

men  of  "  passive  genius."  Their  minds  are  like  black  gla^s, 
absorbing  all  the  rays  of  light,  but  unable  to  give  out  any 
for  the  benefit  of  others.  Jean  Paul  calls  them  "  the  dumb 
ones  of  earth,"  for,  like  Zacharias,  they  have  visions  of 
high  import,  but  are  speechless  when  they  would  tell  them. 
The  infirmity  of  these  dumb  ones,  is,  however,  the  infirmity, 
in  a  less  degree,  of  all  men,  even  the  most  fluent;  for  there 
are  thoughts  which  mock  at  all  attempts  to  expi'ess  them, 
however  "  well-languaged  "  the  thinker  may  be. 

It  is  not  true,  then,  that  language  is,  as  Vinet  char- 
acterizes it,  "/a  peitse'e  deienne  matih'e'' ;  for  the  very 
expression  involves  a  contradiction.  Words  are  nothing 
but  symbols, —  imperfect,  too,  at  best, —  and  to  make  the 
symbol  in  any  way  a  measure  of  the  thought  is  to  bring 
down  the  infinite  to  the  measure  of  the  finite.  It  is  true 
that  our  words  mean  more  than  it  is  in  their  power  to 
express, —  shadow  forth  far  more  than  they  can  define; 
yet,  when  their  capacity  has  been  exhausted,  there  is 
much  which  they  fail,  not  only  to  express,  but  even  to 
hint.  There  are  abysses  of  thought  which  the  plummet 
of  language  can  never  fathom.  Like  the  line  in  mathe- 
matics, which  continually  approaches  to  a  curve,  but, 
though  produced  forever,  does  not  cut  it,  language  can 
never  be  more  than  an  asymptote  to  thought.  Expression, 
even  in  Shakespeare,  has  its  limits.  Xo  power  of  lan- 
guage enables  man  to  reveal  the  features  of  the  mystic 
Isis,  on  whose  statue  was  inscribed:  "I  am  all  which 
hath  been,  which  is,  and  shall  be,  and  no  mortal  hath 
ever  lifted  m}'  veil." 

"Full  oft 
Our  thoughts  drown  speech,  like  to  ii  foainiiig  force 
Which  thunders  down  the  echo  it  creates; 
Words  are  like  the  sea-shells  on  the  shore;  they  show 
Where  the  uiiuJ  ends,  and  not  how  far  it  has  been." 


214  words;  their  use  and  aul'se. 

Notwithstanding  all  this,  however,  there  is  truth  in 
the  lines  of  Boileau: 

"Selon  que  notre  h\Se  est  plus  ou  raoins  obscure, 
L'expression  la  suit,  ou  moins  nette,  ou  plus  pure; 
Ce  que  Ton  coiicoit  bien  s'enonce  clairement, 
Et  les  mots  pour  le  dire  arrivent  ais(?ment."' 

In  spite  of  the  complaints  of  those  who,  like  the  great 
poets  we  have  quoted,  have  expressed  in  language  of 
wondrous  force  and  felicity  their  feeling  of  the  inade- 
quacy of  language,  it  is  doubtless  true,  as  a  general 
thing,  that  impression  and  expression  are  relative  ideas; 
that  what  we  clearly  conceive  we  can  clearly  convey; 
and  that  the  failure  to  embody  our  thoughts  is  less  the 
fault  of  our  mother  tongue  than  of  our  own  deficient 
genius.  What  the  flute  or  the  violin  is  to  the  musician, 
his  native  language  is  to  the  writer.  The  finest  instru- 
ments are  dumb  till  those  melodies  are  put  into  them 
of  which  they  can  be  only  the  passive  conductors.  The 
most  powerful  and  most  polished  language  must  be 
wielded  by  the  master  before  its  full  force  can  be  known. 
The  Philippics  of  Demosthenes  were  pronounced  in  the 
mother  tongue  of  every  one  of  his  audience;  but  "who 
among  them  could  have  answered  him  in  a  single  sen- 
tence like  his  own?  Who  among  them  could  have 
guessed  what  Greek  could  do,  though  they  had  spoken 
it  all  their  lives,  till  they  heard  it  from  his  lips?"  So 
with  our  English  tongue;  it  has  abundant  capabilities 
for  those  who  know  how  to  use  it  aright.  What  subject, 
indeed,  is  there  in  the  whole  boundless  range  of  imagi- 
nation, which  some  English  author  has  not  treated  in 
his  mother  tongue  with  a  nicety  of  definition,  an  accui'acy 
of  porti'aiture,  a  gorgeousness  of  coloring,  a  delicacy  of 
discrimination,  and   a   strength    and   force  of  expression, 


THE   StciiET    OF    APT    WOKDS.  215 

which  fall  scarcely  short  of  perfection  itself  ?  Is  there 
not  something  almost  like  sorcery  in  the  potent  spell 
which  some  of  these  mighty  magicians  of  language  are 
able  to  exercise  over  the  soul?  Yet  the  right  arrange- 
ment of  the  right  words  is  the  whole  secret  of  the 
witchery, — a  charm  within  the  reach  of  any  one  of  equal 
genius.  Possess  yourself  of  the  necessary  ideas,  and  feel 
them  deeply,  and  you  will  not  often  complain  of  the 
barrenness  of  language.  You  will  find  it  abounding  in 
riches, —  exuberant  beyond  the  demand  of  your  intensest 
thought.  "  The  statue  is  not  more  sui-ely  included  in  the 
block  of  marble,  than  is  all  conceivable  splendor  of  utter- 
ance in  '  Webster's  Unabridged.'  "     As  Goethe  says: 

"  Be  thine  to  seek  the  honest  gain, 
No  shallow-sounding  fool; 
Sound  sense  finds  utterance  for  itself. 

Without  the  critic's  rule; 
If  to  your  heart  your  tongue  be  true, 
Why  hunt  for  words  with  much  ado?" 

But  we  hear  some  one  say, —  is  this  the  only  secret  of 
apt  words?  Is  nothing  more  necessary  to  be  done  by 
one  who  would  obtain  a  command  of  language?  Does  not 
Dr.  Blair  tell  us  to  study  the  "  Spectator,"  if  we  would 
learn  to  write  well;  and  does  not  Dr.  Johnson,  too,  declare 
that  "whoever  wishes  to  obtain  an  English  style,  familiar 
but  not  coarse,  and  elegant  but  not  ostentatious,  must  give 
his  days  and  nights  to  the  volumes  of  Addison?"  Yes, 
and  it  is  a  pity  that  Johnson  did  not  act  upon  his  own 
advice.  That  it  is  well  for  a  writer  to  familiarize  hini- 
';elf  with  the  best  models  of  style  (models  sufficiently 
numerous  to  prevent  that  mannerism  which  is  apt  to 
result  from  unconscious  imitation,  when  he  is  familiar 
with    but  one)    nobody  can   doubt.     A    man's   vocabulary 


2\G  "WORDS;   THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

depends  largely  on  the  company  lie  keeps;  and  without  a 
proper  vocabulary  no  man  can  be  a  good  writer.  Words 
are  the  material  that  the  author  works  in,  and  he  must 
use  as  much  care  in  their  selection  as  the  sculptor  in 
choosing  his  marble,  or  the  painter  in  choosing  his  colors. 
By  listening  to  those  who  speak  well,  by  profound  study 
of  the  masterpieces  of  literature,  by  exercises  in  transla- 
tion, and,  above  all,  by  frequent  and  careful  practice  in 
speaking  and  writing,  he  may  not  only  enrich  his  vocab- 
ulary, learn  the  secret  of  the  great  writer's  charm,  and 
elevate  and  refine  his  taste  as  he  can  in  no  other  way, 
but  acquire  such  a  mastery  of  language  that  it  shall  be- 
come, at  last,  a  willing  and  ready  instrument,  obedient 
to  the  lightest  challenge  of  his  thought.  Words,  apt  and 
telling,  will  then  flow  spontaneously,  though  the  result 
of  the  subtlest  art,  like  the  waters  of  our  city  fountains, 
which,  with  much  toil  and  at  great  expense,  are  carried 
into  the  public  squares,  yet  appear  to  gush  forth  natu- 
rally. But  to  suppose  that  a  good  style  can  be  acquired 
by  imitating  any  one  writer,  or  any  set  of  writers,  is  one 
of  the  greatest  follies  that  can  be  imagined.  Such  a 
supposition  is  based  on  the  notion  that  fine  writing  is  an 
addition  from  without  to  the  matter  treated  of, —  a  kind 
of  ornament  superinduced,  or  luxury  indulged  in,  by  one 
who  has  sufficient  genius;  whereas  the  brilliant  or  power- 
ful writer  is  not  one  who  has  merely  a  copious  vocabulary, 
and  can  turn  on  at  will  any  number  of  splendid  phrases 
and  swelling  sentences,  but  he  is  one  who  has  something 
to  say,  and  knows  how  to  say  it.  Whether  he  dashes  off 
his  compositions  at  a  heat,  or  elaborates  them  with  fas- 
tidious nicety  and  care,  he  has  but  one  ai)n,  which  he 
keeps  steadily  before  him,  and  that  is  to  give  forth  what 


THE    SECRET    OF    APT    WORDS.  217 

is  in  him.  From  this  very  earnestness  it  follows  that, 
whatever  be  the  brilliancy  of  his  diction,  or  the  harmony 
of  his  style, —  whether  it  blaze  with  the  splendors  of  a 
gorgeous  rhetoric,  or  take  the  ear  prisoner  with  its  musical 
sui'prises, —  he  never  makes  these  an  end,  but  has  always 
the  charm  of  an  incommunicable  simplicity. 

Such  a  person  "  writes  passionately  because  he  feels 
keenly;  forcibly,  because  he  conceives  vividly;  he  sees  too 
clearly  to  be  vague;  he  is  too  serious  to  be  otiose:  he  can 
analyze  his  subject,  and  therefore  he  is  rich;  he  embraces 
it  as  a  whole  and  in  parts,  and  therefore  he  is  consistent; 
he  has  a  firm  hold  of  it,  and  therefore  he  is  luminous. 
Wlien  his  imagination  wells  up,  it  overflows  in  ornament; 
when  his  heart  is  touched,  it  thrills  along  his  verse.  He 
always  has  the  right  word  for  the  right  idea,  and  never 
a  word  too  much.  If  he  is  brief,  it  is  because  few  words 
suffice;  when  he  is  lavish  of  them,  still  each  word  has 
its  mark,  and  aids,  not  embarrasses,  the  vigorous  march 
of  his  elocution.  He  expresses  what  all  feel,  but  what 
all  cannot  say,  and  his  sayings  pass  into  proverbs  among 
the  people,  and  his  phrases  become  household  words  and 
idioms  of  thei.'  daily  speech,  which  is  tessellated  with  the 
rich  fragments  of  his  language,  as  we  see  in  foreign  lands 
the  marbles  of  Roman  grandeur  worked  into  the  walls  and 
pavements  of  modern  palaces."  * 

It  follows  from  all  tliis  that  there  is  no  model  style, 
and  that  the  kind  of  style  deniandod  in  any  composition 
depends  upon  the  man  and  his  theme.  The  first  law  of 
good  writing  is  that  it  should  be  an  expression  of  a  man's 
self, —  a  reflected  image  of  his  own  character.  If  we  know 
what  tlie  man  is,  we  know  what  his  style  should  be.     If  it 

*  "The  Ideii  of  a  University,'"  by  J.  H.  Newman. 


218  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

mirrors  his  individuality,  it  is,  relatively,  good;  if  it  is  not 
a  self-portraiture,  it  is  bad,  however  polished  its  periods, 
or  rhythmical  its  cadences.  The  graces  and  witcheries  of 
expression  which  charm  us  in  an  original  writer,  offend  us 
in  a  copyist.  Style  is  sometimes,  though  not  very  happily, 
termed  the  dress  of  thought.  It  is  really,  as  Wordsworth 
long  ago  declared,  the  incarnation  of  thought.  In  Greek, 
the  same  word,  Logos,  stands  for  reason  and  speech, —  and 
why?  Because  they  cannot  be  divided;  because  thought 
and  expression  are  one.  They  each  co-exist,  not  one  with 
the  other,  but  in  and  through  the  othei-.  Not  till  we  can 
separate  the  soul  and  the  body,  life  and  motion,  the  convex 
and  concave  of  a  curve,  shall  we  be  able  to  divorce  thought 
from  the  language  which  only  can  embed}-  it.  But  allow- 
ing, for  the  moment,  that  style  is  the  verbal  clothing  of 
ideas,  who  but  the  most  poverty-stricken  person  would  think 
of  wearing  the  clothes  of  another?  It  is  true  that  there  are 
certain  general  qualities,  such  as  clearness,  force,  flexibilit}', 
simplicity,  variety,  which  all  good  styles  will  alike  possess, 
just  as  all  good  clothing  will  have  certain  qualities  in  com- 
mon. But  for  all  men  to  clothe  their  thoughts  in  the  same 
manner  would  be  as  foolish  as  for  a  giant  to  array  himself 
in  the  garments  of  a  dwarf,  a  stout  man  in  those  of  a  thin, 
or  a  brunette  in  those  of  a  blonde.  Robert  Hall,  when 
preaching  in  early  life  at  Cambridge,  England,  for  a  short 
time  aped  Dr.  Johnson;  but  he  soon  saw  the  folly  of  it.  "I 
might  as  well  have  attempted,"  said  he,  "  to  dance  a  horn- 
pipe in  the  cumbrous  costume  of  Gog  and  Magog.  My 
puny  thoughts  could  not  sustain  the  load  of  words  in  which 
I  ti;ied  to  clothe  them." 

It  is  with  varieties  of  style  as  with  the  varieties  of  the 
human  face,  or  of  the  leaves  of  the  forest;    while  they  are 


THE   SECRET   OF   APT   WORDS.  219 

obvious  in  their  general  resemblance,  yet  there  are  never 
two  indistinguishably  alike.  Sometimes  the  differences  are 
very  slight, —  so  minute  and  subtle,  as  almost  to  defy  char- 
acterization; yet,  like  the  diflFerences  in  musical  styles 
which  closely  resemble  each  other,  they  are  felt  by  the  dis- 
cerning reader,  and  so  strongly  that  he  will  scarcely 
mistake  the  authorship,  even  on  a  single  reading.  Men  of 
similar  natures  will  have  similar  styles;  but  think  of 
Waller  aping  the  gait  of  Wordsworth,  or  Leigh  Hunt  tliat 
of  Milton!  Can  any  one  conceive  of  Hooker's  style  as  slip- 
shod,—  of  Dryden's  as  feeble  and  obscure, —  of  Gibbon's  as 
mean  and  vulgar,— of  Burke's  as  timid  and  creeping, —  of 
Carlyle's  as  dainty  and  mincing, —  of  Emerson's  as  diffuse 
and  pointless, —  or  of  Xapier's  as  lacking  picturesqueness, 
verve,  and  fire? 

There  are  some  writers  of  a  quiet,  even  temperament, 
whose  sentences  flow  gently  along  like  a  stream  through  a 
level  country,  that  hardly  disturbs  the  stillness  of  the  air 
b}^  a  sound;  there  are  others  vehement,  rapid,  redundant, 
that  roll  on  like  a  mountain  torrent  forcing  its  way  over 
all  obstacles,  and  filling  the  valleys  and  woods  with  the 
echoes  of  its  roar.  One  author,  deep  in  one  place,  and 
shallow  in  another,  reminds  you  of  the  Ohio,  here  unforda- 
l)Ie,  and  there  full  of  sand  bars, —  now  hurrying  on  v»'ith 
rapid  current,  and  now  expanding  into  lovely  lakes,  fringed 
witli  forests  and  overhung  with  hills;  another,  always 
brimming  with  thought,  I'eminds  you  of  the  Mississippi, 
wliicli  rolls  onward  the  same  vast  volume,  with  no  apparent 
diminution,  from  Cairo  to  New  Orleans.  "Sydney  Smith, 
concise,  brisk,  and  brilliant,  has  a  manner  of  composition 
which  exactly  corresponds  to  those  qualities;  but  liow 
would  Lord  Bacon  look  in  Smith's  sentences?  How  grandly 


2;i0  AVOKDs;  their  use  and  abuse. 

the  soul  of  Milton  rolls  and  winds  through  the  arches  and 
laliyrinths  of  his  involved  and  magnificent  diction,  waking 
musical  echoes  at  every  new  turn  and  variation  of  its 
progress;  but  how  could  the  thought  of  such  a  light  tri- 
fler  as  Gibber  travel  through  so  glorious  a  maze,  without 
being  lost  or  crushed  in  the  journey?  The  plain,  manly 
language  of  John  Locke  could  hardly  be  translated  into 
the  terminology  of  Kant, —  would  look  out  of  place  in  the 
rapid  and  sparkling  movement  of  Cousin's  periods, —  and 
would  appear  mean  in  the  cadences  of  Dugald  Stewart."* 

Not  only  has  every  original  writer  his  own  style,  which 
mirrors  his  individualit}',  but  the  writers  of  every  age 
differ  from  those  of  every  other  age.  Joubert  has  well 
said  that  if  the  French  authors  of  to-day  were  to  write  as 
men  wrote  in  the  time  of  Louis  XIV,  their  style  would 
lack  truthfulness,  for  the  French  of  to-day  have  not  the 
same  dispositions,  the  same  opinions,  the  same  manners.  A 
woman  who  should  write  like  Madame  Sevigne  would  be 
ridiculous,  because  she  is  not  Madame  Sevigne.  The  more 
one's  writing  smacks' of  his  own  character  and  of  the 
manners  of  his  time,  the  more  widely  must  his  style  diverge 
from  that  of  the  writers  who  were  models  only  because 
they  excelled  in  manifesting  in  their  works  either  the 
manners  of  theiv  own  age  or  their  own  character.  Who 
would  tolerate  to-day  a  writer  who  should  reproduce,  how- 
ever successfully,  the  stately  periods  of  Johnson,  the  mel- 
lifluous lines  of  Pope,  or  the  faultless  but  nerveless  periods 
of  Addison?  The  style  that  is  to  please  to-day  must  be 
dense  with  meaning  and  full  of  color;  it  must  be  sugges- 
tive, sharp,  and  incisive.  So  far  is  imitation  of  the  old 
masterpieces    from    being   commendable,  that,  as   Joubert 

*  "  Essays  and  Reviews,"  by  Edwin  P.  Whipple. 


THE   SECRET  OF   APT   WORDS.  221 

says,  good  taste  itself  permits  one  to  avoid  imitating  the 
best  styles,  for  taste,  even  good  taste,  changes  with  man- 
ners,— "  Le  hon  gout  Iid-nieDie,  en  ce  cas,  permet  quon 
s'ecarte  du  meilleur  goilt,  car  le  goilt  change  avec  les 
moeurs,  meme  le  hon  goilty 

Let  no  man,  then,  aim  at  the  cultivation  of  style  for 
style's  sake,  independently  of  ideas,  for  all  such  aims  will 
result  in  failure.  To  suppose  that  noble  or  impressive 
language  is  a  communicable  trick  of  rhetoric  and  accent, 
is  one  of  the  most  mischievous  of  fallacies.  Every  writer 
has  his  own  ideas  and  feelings, —  his  own  conceptions, 
judgments,  discriminations,  and  comparisons, —  which  are 
personal,  proper  to  himself,  in  the  same  sense  that  his 
looks,  his  voice,  his  air,  his  gait,  and  his  action  are  personal. 
If  he  has  a  vulgar  mind,  he  will  write  vulgarly;  if  he  has 
a  noble  nature,  he  will  write  nobly;  in  every  case,  the 
beauty  or  ugliness  of  his  moral  countenance,  the  force 
and  keenness  or  the  feebleness  of  his  logic,  will  be  imaged 
in  his  language.  It  follows,  therefore,  as  Ruskin  says, 
that  all  the  virtues  of  language  are,  in  their  roots,  moral: 
it  becomes  accurate,  if  the  writer  desires  to  be  true;  clear, 
if  he  write  with  sympathy  and  a  desire  to  be  intelligible; 
powerful,  if  he  has  earnestness;  pleasant,  if  he  has  a  sense 
of  rhythm  and  order. 

This  sensibility  of  language  to  the  impulses  and  qual- 
ities of  him  who  uses  it;  its  flexibility  in  accommodating 
itself  to  all  the  thoughts,  feelings,  imaginations,  ami 
aspirations  which  pass  within  him,  so  as  to  become  the 
fiiithful  expression  of  his  personality,  indicating  the  very 
pulsating  and  throbbing  of  his  intellect,  and  attending 
on  his  own  inwai'd  world  of  thought  as  its  very  shadow; 
and,  strangest,  perhaps,  the  magical  power  it  has,  where 


222  words;  tueir  use  and  abuse. 

tliought  transcends  the  sensuous  capacities  of  language, 
to  suggest  the  idea  or  mood  it  cannot  directly  convey, 
and  to  give  forth  an  aroma  wliicli  no  analysis  of  word 
or  expression  reveals, —  is  one  of  the  marvels  of  iiuman 
speech.  The  writer,  therefore,  who  is  so  magnetized  by 
another's  genius  that  he  cannot  say  anything  in  his  own 
way,  but  is  perpetually  imitating  the  other's  structure  of 
sentence  and  turns  of  expression,  confesses  his  barrenness. 
The  only  way  to  make  another's  style  one's  own  is  to 
possess  one's  self  of  his  mind  and  soul.  If  we  would 
reproduce  his  peculiarities  of  diction,  we  must  first 
acquire  the  qualities  that  produced  them.  "Language," 
says  Goldwin  Smith,  "  is  not  a  musical  instrument  into 
Which,  if  a  fool  breathe,  it  will  make  melody.  Its  tones 
are  evoked  only  by  the  spirit  of  high  or  tender  thought; 
and  though  truth  is  not  always  eloquent,  real  eloquence 
is  always  the  glow  of  truth."  As  Sainte-Beuve  says  of 
the  plainness  and  brevity  of  Napoleon's  style, — "  Pre- 
tendre  imiter  le  2)recede  de  diction  du  heros  qui  sut 
ahreger  Ccesar  lui-nieme  .  .  .  il  convient  d'avoir  fait 
d'aussi  grandes  choses  7:>o/o'  avoir  le  droit  d'etre  oussi  nu^ 
It  is  not  imitation,  but  general  culture, —  as  another 
has  said,  the  constant  submission  of  a  teachable,  appre- 
hensive mind  to  the  influence  of  minds  of  the  highest 
order,  in  daily  life  and  books, —  that  brings  out  upon 
style  its  daintiest  bloom  and  its  richest  fruitage.  "  So 
in  the  making  of  a  fine  singer,  after  the  voice  has  been 
developed,  and  the  rudiments  of  vocalization  have  been 
learned,  farther  instruction  is  almost  of  no  avail.  But 
the  frequent  hearing  of  the  best  music  given  by  the  best 
singers  and  instrumentalists, —  the  living  in  an  atmos- 
phere of  art  and   literature, —  will  develop  and  perfect  a 


THE   SECRET   OF   APT   WORDS.  223 

vocal  style  in  one  who  has  the  gift  of  song;  and,  for  any 
other,  all  the  instruction  of  all  the  musical  professors 
that  ever  came  out  of  Italy  will  do  no  more  than  teach 
an  avoidance  of  positive  errors  in  musical  grammar."  * 

The  Cabalists  believed  that  whoever  found  the  mystic 
word  for  anything  attained  to  as  absolute  mastery  over 
that  thing  as  did  the  robbers  over  the  door  of  their  cave 
in  the  Arabian  tale.  The  converse  is  true  of  expression; 
for  he  who  is  thoroughly  possessed  of  his  thought  becomes 
master  of  the  word  fitted  to  express  it,  while  he  who  has 
but  a  half-possession  of  it  vainly  seeks  to  torture  out  of 
language  the  secret  of  that  inspiration  which  should  be  in 
himself.  The  secret  of  force  in  writing  or  speaking  lies 
not  in  Blair's  "Rhetoric,"  or  Roget's  "Thesaurus," — not 
in  having  a  copious  vocabulary,  or  a  dozen  words  for 
every  idea, —  but  in  having  something  that  you  earn?;stly 
wish  to  say,  and  making  the  parts  of  speech  vividly  con- 
scious of  it.  Phidias,  the  great  Athenian  sculptor,  said 
of  one  of  his  pupils  that  he  had  an  inspired  thumb, 
because  the  modelling  clay  yielded  to  its  careless  touch 
a  grace  of  sweep  which  it  refused  to  the  utmost  pains  of 
others.  So  he  who  has  thoroughly  possessed  himself  of 
his  thought  will  not  have  to  hunt  through  his  dictionary 
for  apt  and  expressive  words, —  a  method  which  is  but  an 
outside  remedy  for  an  inward  defect, —  but  will  find  lan- 
guage eagerly  obedient  1o  liiin,  as  if  every  word  should  say, 

"7?j(<  inc  discourse;   1  will  ciidiant  thine  ear," 

and  fit  expressions,  as  Milton  says,  "  like  so  many  nimble 
and  airy  servitors,  will  tj'ip  about  him  at  command,  and, 
in   well-ordered    files,   fall    aptly   into  their    own    places." 

•"Words  and  Their  Usee,"  by  Richard  Grant  White. 


234  words;    their    use    and    AI5U8E. 

It  was  the  lioast  of  Dante  that  no  word  liad  ever  forced 
him  to  say  what  he  would  not,  though  he  had  forced  many 
a  word  to  say  what  it  would  not;  and  so  will  every  writer, 
who  as  vividly  conceives  and  as  deeply  feels  his  theme, 
be  able  to  conjure  out  of  words  their  uttermost  secret  0/ 
power  or  pathos. 

The  question  has  been  sometimes  discussed  whether  the 
best  style  is  a  colorless  medium,  which,  like  good  glass, 
only  lets  the  thought  be  distinctly  seen,  or  whether  it 
imparts  a  pleasure  apart  from  the  ideas  it  conveys.  There 
are  those  who  hold  that  when  language  is  simply  trans- 
parent,—  when  it  comes  to  us  so  refined  of  all  its  dross, 
so  spiritualized  in  its  substance  that  we  lose  sight  of  it 
as  a  vehicle,  and  the  thought  stands  out  with  clearness 
in  all  its  proportions, — we  are  at  the  very  summit  of  the 
literary  art.  This  is  the  character  of  Southey's  best  prose, 
and  of  Paley's  writing,  whose  statement  of  a  false  theory 
is  so  lucid  that  it  becomes  a  refutation.  There  are  writers, 
however,  who  charm  us  by  their  language,  apart  from  the 
ideas  it  conveys.  There  is  a  kind  of  mysterious  perfume 
about  it,  a  delicious  aroma,  which  we  keenly  enjoy,  but 
for  which  we  cannot  account.  Poetry  often  possesses  a 
beauty  wholly  unconnected  with  its  meaning.  Who  has 
not  admired,  independently  of  the  sense,  its  "jewels,  five 
words  long,  that,  on  the  stretched  forefinger  of  all  time, 
sparkle  forever"?  There  are  passages  in  which  the  mere 
cadence  of  the  woi'ds  is  by  itself  delicious  to  a  delicate  ear, 
though  we  cannot  tell  how  and  why.  We  are  conscious 
of  a  strange,  dreamy  sense  of  enjoyment,  such  as  one  feels 
when  lying  upon  the  grass  in  a  June  evening,  while  a 
brook  tinkles  over  stones  among  the  sedges  and  trees. 
Sir  Philii)  Sidnev  could  not  hear  the  old  ballad  of  Chevy 


THE   SECRET   OF   APT   WORDS.  225 

Chase  without  his  blood  being  stirred  as  by  the  sound  of 
a  trumpet;  Boyle  felt  a  tremor  at  the  utterance  of  two 
verses  of  Lucan ;  and  Spence  declares  that  he  never  re- 
peated particular  lines  of  delicate  modulation  without  a 
shiver  in  his  blood,  not  to  be  expressed.  Who  is  not 
sensible  of  certain  magical  effects,  altogether  distinct  from 
the  thoughts,  in  some  of  Coleridge's  weird  verse,  in  Keats's 
"Nightingale,"  and  in  the  grand  harmonies  of  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,  Jeremy  Taylor,  Ruskin,  and  De  Quincey? 

Perspicuity,  or  transparency  of  style,  is,  undoubtedly, 
the  first  law  of  all  composition;  but  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  vividness,  which  was  the  ruling  conception  of  the 
Greeks  with  regard  to  this  property  of  style,  is  not  quite 
as  essential.  Style,  it  has  been  well  said, "  is  not  only  a 
medium;  it  is  also  a  form.  It  is  not  enough  that  the 
thoughts  be  seen  through  a  clear  medium;  they  must  be 
seen  in  a  distinct  shape.  It  is  not  enough  that  truth  be 
visible  in  a  clear,  pure  air;  the  atmosphei'e  must  not  only 
be  crystalline  and  sparkling,  but  the  things  in  it  must 
be  bounded  and  defined  by  sharply  cut  lines."  * 

A  style  may  be  as  transparent  as  rock-water,  and  yet 
the  thoughts  be  destitute  of  boldness  and  originality.  The 
highest  degree  of  transparency,  however,  can  be  attained 
only  by  the  writer  who  has  thoroughly  mastered  his  theme, 
and  whose  whole  nature  is  stirred  by  it.  As  that  exquisite 
material  through  which  we  gaze  from  our  windows  on 
the  beauties  of  nature,  obtains  its  crystalline  beauty  after 
undergoing  the  furnace, —  as  it  was  melted  by  fire  before 
the  rough  particles  of  sand  disappeared, —  so  it  is  with 
language.  It  is  only  a  burning  invention  that  can  make 
it    transparent.     A  powerful    imngination    must    fuse   the 

*  "  Iloiiiilctics  and  Pastoral  Theology,"  by  W.  G.  Shudd,  D.D. 


226  words;  tkeir  use  axd  abuse. 

harsh  elements  of  composition  until  all  foreign  substances 
have  disappeared,  and  every  coarse,  shapeless  word  has 
been  absorbed  by  the  heat,  and  then  the  language  will 
brighten  into  that  clear  and  unclouded  style  through  which 
the  most  delicate  conceptions  of  the  mind  and  the  faintest 
emotions  of  the  heart  are  visible. 

How  many  human  thoughts  have  baffled  for  generations 
every  attempt  to  give  them  expression!  How  many  opin- 
ions and  conclusions  are  there,  which  form  the  basis  of 
our  daily  reflections,  the  matter  for  the  ordinary  opera- 
tions of  our  minds,  which  were  toiled  after  perhaps  for 
ages,  before  they  were  seized  and  rendered  comprehensible! 
How  many  ideas  are  thei'e  which  we  ourselves  have 
grasped  at,  as  if  we  saw  them  floating  in  an  atmosphere 
just  above  us,  and  found  the  arm  of  our  intellect  just 
too  short  to  reach  them ;  and  then  comes  a  happier  genius, 
who,  in  a  lucky  moment,  and  from  some  vantage  ground, 
arrests  the  meteor  in  its  flight,  and,  grasping  the  floating 
phantom,  drags  it  from  the  skies  to  earth;  condenses  that 
which  was  but  an  impalpable  coruscation  of  spirit;  fetters 
that  which  was  but  the  lightning-glance  of  thought;  and, 
having  so  mastered  it,  bestows  it  as  a  perpetual  posses- 
sion and  heritage  on  mankind! 

The  arrangement  of  words  by  great  writers  on  the 
printed  page  has  sometimes  been  compared  to  the  arrange- 
ment of  soldiers  on  the  field;  and  if  it  is  interesting  to  see 
how  a  great  general  marshals  his  regiments,  it  is  certainly 
not  less  so  to  see  how  the  Alexanders  and  Napoleons  of 
letters  marshal  their  verbal  battalions  on  the  battle-fields  of 
thought.  Foremost  among  those  who  wield  despotic  swa}' 
over  the  domain  of  letters,  is  my  Lord  Bacon,  whose 
words  are   like   a    Spartan   phalanx,   closely   compacted, — 


THE    SECRET    OF    APT    AVORDS.  227 

almost  crowding  each  other,  so  close  are  their  files, — 
and  all  moving  in  irresistible  array,  without  confusion 
or  chasm,  now  holding  some  Thermopyls  of  new  truth 
against  some  scholastic  Xerxes,  now  storming  some  ancient 
Malakoff  of  error,  but  always  with  "  victory  sitting  eagle- 
winged  on  their  crests,"  A  strain  of  music  bursts  on 
your  ear,  sweet  as  is  Apollo's  lute,  and  lo!  Milton's  daz- 
zling files,  clad  in  celestial  panoply,  lifting  high  their 
gorgeous  ensign,  which  "shines  like  a  meteor,  streaming 
to  the  wind,"  "  breathing  united  force  and  fixed  thought," 
come  moving  on  "  in  perfect  phalanx,  to  the  Dorian 
mood  of  flutes  and  soft  recorders."  Next  comes  Chilling- 
worth,  with  his  glittering  rapier,  all  rhetorical  rule  and 
flourish,  according  to  the  schools, — ixissado,  niontanso, 
staccato, —  one,  two,  thi-ee, —  the  third  in  your  bosom. 
Then  stalks  along  Chatham,  with  his  two-handed  sword, 
striking  with  the  edge,  while  he  pierces  with  the  point, 
and  stuns  with  the  hilt,  and  wielding  the  ponderous 
weapon  as  easily  as  you  would  a  flail.  Next  strides  John- 
son with  elephantine  tread,  with  the  club  of  logic  in  one 
hand  and  a  revolver  in  the  other,  hitting  right  and  left 
with  antithetical  blows,  and,  "  when  his  pistol  misses  fire, 
knocking  you  down  with  the  butt  end  of  it."  Burke, 
with  lighted  linstock  in  hand,  stands  by  a  Lancaster  gun; 
he  touches  it,  and  forth  there  burst,  with  loud  and  ring- 
ing roar,  missiles  of  every  conceivable  description, —  chain 
shot,  stone,  iron  darts,  spikes,  shells,  grenadoes,  torpedoes, 
and  balls,  that  cut  down  everything  before  them.  Close 
after  him  steals  Jeffrey,  armed  cap-a-pie, —  carrying  a 
tomahawk  in  one  hand  and  a  scalping-knife  in  the  other, 
—  steeped  to  the  eye  in  fight,  cunning  of  fence,  master 
of  his  weapon  and  merciless  in  its  use,   and  "  playing  it 


228  WORDS;   THEIR   USE   AND   ABUSE. 

like  a  tongue  of  flame"  before  his  trembling  victims. 
There  is  Brougham,  slaying  half-a-dozen  enemies  at  once 
with  a  tremendous  Scotch  claymore;  Macaulay,  running 
under  his  opponent's  guard,  and  stabbing  him  to  the 
heart  with  the  heavy  dagger  of  a  short,  epigrammatic 
sentence;  Hugh  Elliot,  cracking  his  enemies'  skulls  with 
a  sledge-hammer,  or  pounding  them  to  jelly  with  his  huge 
fists;  Sydney  Smith,  firing  his  arrows,  feathered  with 
fancy  and  pointed  with  the  steel  of  the  keenest  wit;  Dis- 
raeli, armed  with  an  oriental  scimitar,  which  dazzles  while 
it  kills;  Emerson,  transfixing  his  adversaries  with  a  blade 
of  transcendental  temper,  snatched  from  the  scabbard  of 
Plato;  and  Carlyle,  relentless  iconoclast  of  shams,  who 
"  gangs  his  ain  gait,"  armed  with  an  antique  stone  axe, 
with  which  he  smashes  solemn  humbugs  as  you  would 
drugs  with  a  pestle  and  mortar. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE   SECRET    OF    APT    WORDS  —  [cont billed ). 

"  To  acquii-o  a  few  tongues,"  says  a  French  writer,  "  is  the  task  of  a 
few  years;  but  to  be  eloquent  in  one  is  tlie  labor  of  a  life.'"— Colton. 

When  words  are  restrained  by  common  usage  to  a  particular  sense,  to  run 
up  to  etymology,  and  construe  them  by  a  dictionary,  is  wretchedly  ridicu- 
lous.— Jeremy  Collier. 

Where  do  the  words  of  Greece  and  Rome  excel. 

That  England  may  not  please  the  ear  as  well  ? 

What  mighty  magic's  in  the  place  or  air, 

That  all  perfection  needs  must  centre  there  ?— Churchill. 

TT  is  an  interesting  question  connected  with  the  subject 
-*-  of  style,  whether  a  knowledge  of  other  languages  is 
necessary  to  give  an  English  writer  a  full  command  of  his 
own.  Among  the  arguments  urged  in  behalf  of  the  study 
of  Greek  and  Latin  in  our  colleges,  one  of  the  common- 
est is  the  supposed  absolute  necessity  of  a  knowledge  of 
those  tongues  to  one  who  would  speak  and  write  his  own 
language  effectively.  The  English  language,  we  are 
reminded,  is  a  composite  one,  of  whose  words  thirty  per 
cent  are  of  Roman  origin,  and  nearly  five  per  cent  of 
Greek;  and  is  it  not  an  immense  help,  we  are  asked,  to 
a  full  and  accurate  knowledge  of  the  meanings  of  the 
words  we  use,  to  know  their  entire  history,  including 
their  origin?  Is  not  the  many-sided  Goethe  an  authority 
on  this  subject,  and  does  he  not  tell  us  that  "  uer  fremde 
sprache  nicht  kennt  weiss  nichts  von  seinen  eigenen,'" — 
"  He  who  is  acquainted  with  no  foreign  tongues,  knows 
nothing  of  his  own"?     Have  we  not  the  authority  of  one 

229 


23U  woiiDs;  THEIR  usk  and  abuse. 

of  the  earliest  of  English  schoolmasters,  Roger  Aschain, 
for  the  opinion  that,  "  even  as  a  hawke  fleetli  not  hie 
with  one  wing,  even  so  a  man  reacheth  not  to  excellency 
with  one  tongue"? 

In  answering  the  general  question  in  the  negative,  we 
do  not  mean  to  question  the  value  or  i)rofound  interest  of 
philological  studies,  or  to  express  any  douht  concerning 
their  utility  as  a  means  of  mental  discipline.  The  value 
of  classical  literature  as  an  instrument  of  education  has 
been  decided  by  an  overwhelming  majority  of  persons  of 
culture.  We  cannot,  without  prejudice  to  humanity,  sepa- 
rate the  present  from  the  past.  The  nineteenth  century 
strikes  its  roots  into  the  centuries  gone  by,  and  draws 
nutriment  from  them.  Oar  whole  literature  is  closely 
connected  with  that  of  the  ancients,  draws  its  inspiration 
from  it,  and  can  be  understood  only  by  constant  reference 
to  it.  As  a  means  of  that  encyclopedic  culture,  of  that 
thorough  intellectual  equipment,  whicli  is  one  of  the  most 
imperious  demands  of  modern  society,  an  acquaintance 
with  foi-eign,  and  especially  with  classic,  literature,  is  abso- 
lutely indispensable;  for  the  records  of  knowledge  and  of 
thought  are  many-tongued,  and  even  if  a  great  writer 
could  have  wreaked  his  thoughts  upon  expression  in  an- 
other language,  it  is  certain  that  another  mind  can  only  in 
a  few  cases  adequately  translate  them.  It  is  only  by  the 
study  of  diflFerent  languages  and  diflferent  literatures, 
ancient  as  well  as  modern,  that  we  can  escape  that  narrow- 
ness of  thought,  that  Chinese  cast  of  mind,  which  charac- 
terizes those  persons  who  know  no  language  but  their  own, 
and  learn  to  distinguish  what  is  essentially,  universally, 
and  eternally  good  and  true  from  what  is  the  result  of 
accident,  local  opinion,  or  the  fleeting  circumstances  of  the 


THE   SECRET    OF    APT    WORDS.  231 

time.  It  is  useless  to  say  that  we  know  human  nature 
thoroughly,  if"  we  know  nothing  of  anti(iuity;  and  we  can 
know  antiquity  only  by  study  of  the  originals.  Mitford, 
Grote,  and  Mommsen  differ,  and  the  reader  who  consults 
them  with  no  knowledge  of  Greek  or  Latin  is  at  the  mercy 
of  the  last  author  he  has  perused.  It  has  been  frequently 
remarked  that  every  school  of  thinkers  has  its  mannerism 
and  its  mania,  for  which  there  is  no  cure  but  intercourse 
with  those  who  are  free  from  them.  To  study  any  class  of 
writers  exclusively  is  to  bow  slavishly  to  their  authority,  to 
accept  their  opinions,  to  make  their  tastes  our  tastes,  and 
their  prejudices  our  prejudices.  Only  by  qualifying  their 
ideas  and  sentiments,  with  the  thoughts  and  sentiments  of 
writers  in  other  ages,  shall  we  be  able  to  resist  the  intense 
pressure  which  is  thus  exercised  upon  our  convictions  and 
feelings,  and  avoid  that  mental  slavery  which  is  baser  than 
the  slavery  of  the  body. 

The  question,  however,  is  not  about  the  general  educa- 
tional value  of  classical  studies,  but  whether  they  are  indis- 
pensable to  him  who  would  write  or  speak  English  with 
the  highest  force,  elegance,  and  accuracy.  I  think  they 
are  not.  In  the  first  place,  I  deny  that  a  knowledge  of 
the  etymologies  of  wox'ds, —  of  their  meanings  a  hundred  or 
five  hundred  years  ago, —  is  essential  to  their  proper  use 
now.  How  am  I  aided  in  the  use  of  the  word  "  villain  " 
by  knowing  that  it  once  meant  peasant,  —  in  the  use  of 
"wince"  by  knowing  that  it  meant  kick, —  in  the  use  of 
"brat,"  "beldam,"  and  "pedant,"  by  knowing  that  they 
meant,  respectively,  child,  fine  lady,  and  tutor, —  in  the  use 
of  "  meddle,"  by  knowing  that  formerly  it  had  no  offensive 
meaning,  and  that  one  could  meddle  even  with  his  own 
affairs?     Am   I  more  or   less   likely  to   use   "ringleader" 


232  WORDS;   THEIR   USE   AND   ABUSE. 

correctly  to-day,  from  learning  that  Christ  is  correctly 
spoken  of  by  an  old  divine  as  "the  ringleader  of  our 
salvation"?  Shall  I  be  helped  in  the  employment  of  the 
word  "musket"  by  knowing  that  it  was  once  the  name  of 
a  small  hawk,  or  fly,  or  in  the  use  of  the  word  "  tragedy  " 
by  knowing  that  it  is  connected  in  some  way  with  the 
Greek  word  for  a  goat?  Facts  like  these  are  of  deep 
interest  to  all,  and  of  high  value  to  the  scholar;  but  how 
is  the  knowledge  of  them  necessary  that  one  may  speak 
or  write  well? 

The  question  with  the  man  who  addi-esses  his  fellow- 
man  by  tongue  or  pen  to-day,  is  not  what  ought  to  be, 
or  formerly  was,  the  meaning  of  a  word,  but,  what  is  it 
Hotv?  Indeed,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  a  reference  to 
the  roots  and  derivations, —  the  old  original  meanings  of 
words, — which  have  grown  obsolete  by  the  fluctuations 
of  manners,  customs,  and  a  thousand  other  causes,  does 
not,  as  Archbishop  Whately  insists,  tend  to  confusion, 
and  prove  rather  a  hindrance  than  a  help  to  the  correct 
use  of  our  tongue.  Words  not  only,  for  the  most  part, 
ride  very  slackly  at  anchor  on  their  etymologies,  borne, 
as  they  are,  hither  and  thither  by  the  shifting  tides  and 
currents  of  usage,  but  they  often  break  away  from  their 
moorings  altogether.  The  knowledge  of  a  man's  antece- 
dents may  help  us  sometimes  to  estimate  his  present  self  : 
but  the  knowledge  of  what  a  word  meant  three  or  twenty 
centuries  ago  may  only  mislead  us  as  to  its  meaning 
now.  Spenser  uses  the  word  "  edify "  in  the  sense  of 
"to  build";  but  would  any  one  speak  of  a  house  being 
edified  to-day?  "Symbol"'  and  "conjecture"  are  words 
that  etymologically  have  precisely  the  same  signification; 
and   the  same   is  true   of  "  hypostasis,"   "  substance,"  and 


THE    SECKET    OF    APT    WORDS.  233 

"  understanding,"  derived  respectively  from  the  Greek, 
Latin,  and  Saxon;  yet  have  either  the  two  former,  or  the 
three  latter  words,  as  they  are  now  used,  the  least  simi- 
larity of  meaning?  Is  it  desirable  to  call  a  suffering  man 
a  "  passionate"  man, —  to  say  with  Bishop  Lowth  that  "  the 
Emperor  Julian  very  'judiciously'  planned  the  overthrow 
of  Christianity," — to  speak  with  Paley  of  the  "judicious- 
ness" of  God, —  and  with  Guizot  of  the  "duplicity"  of  cer- 
tain plays  of  Shakespeare  (meaning  their  dual  structure), 
— merely  because  we  find  these  significations  lying  at  the 
remote  and  dead  roots  of  the  words  which  we  now  employ 
in  wholly  different  significations'?  The  effect  of  a  con- 
stant reference  to  etymology,  in  the  use  of  words,  is  seen  in 
the  writings  of  Milton,  whose  use  of  "elate"  for  "lifted 
on  high,"  "  implicit "  for  "  entangled,"  "  succinct "  for 
"girded,"  "spirited"  for  "inspired,"  and  hundreds  of 
other  such  perversions  of  language,  may  please  the  scholar 
who  loves  to  crack  philological  nuts,  but  is  fitted  only 
to  perplex,  confound,  and  mislead  the  ordinary  reader. 
It  is  seen  still  more  plainly  in  the  writings  of  Donne, 
Jeremy  Taylor,  and  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  who  not  only 
imported  Latin  words  by  wholesale  into  the  language, 
only  giving  them  an  anglicized  form  and  termination, 
but  sometimes  employed  in  a  new  sense  words  already 
adopted  into  English,  and  used  in  their  original  sense. 
Thus  Taylor  uses  "immured"  for  "encompassed,"  "irri- 
tation" for  "making  void";  and  in  referring  to  "the 
bruising  of  the  serpent's  head,"  he  ludicrously  speaks  of 
the  "'  contrition'  of  the  serpent."  Again,  he  uses  the  word 
"  excellent "  for  "  surpassing,"  and  even  perverts  the 
meaning  of  the  word  so  far  as  to  speak  of  "an  'excellent' 
pain!" 


234  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

Will  it  be  said  that  worJs  become  more  vivid  and  pic- 
turesquc, —  that  we  get  a  firmer  and  more  vigorous  grasp 
of  their  meaning, — when,  as  Coleridge  advises,  we  present 
to  our  minds  the  visual  images  that  form  their  primary 
meanings?  The  reply  is,  that  long  use  deadens  us  to  the 
susceptibility  of  such  images,  and  in  not  one  case  in  a 
thousand,  probably,  ai-e  they  noticed.  How  many  college 
graduates  think  of  a  "miser"  as  being  etymologically  a 
"miserable"  man,  of  a  "savage"  as  one  living  in  "a 
wood,"  or  of  a  "desultory"  reader  as  one  who  leaps  from 
one  study  to  another,  as  a  circus  rider  leaps  from  Jiorse 
to  horse?  A  distinguished  poet  once  confessed  that  the 
Latin  imago  first  suggested  itself  to  him  as  the  root  of 
the  English  word  "  imagination  "  when,  after  having  been 
ten  yeai'S  a  versifier,  he  was  asked  by  a  friend  to  define 
this  most  impoi'tant  term  in  the  critical  vocabulary  of 
his  art.  "  We  have  had  to  notice  over  and  over  again," 
says  Mr.  "Whitney  in  his  late  work  on  "The  Life  and 
Growth  of  Language,"  "  the  readiness  on  the  part  of  lan- 
guage-users to  forget  origins,  to  cast  aside  as  cumbrous 
rubbish  the  etymological  suggestiveness  of  a  term,  and 
concentrate  force  upon  the  new  and  more  adventitious  tie. 
This  is  one  of  the  most  fundamental  and  valuable  ten- 
dencies in  name-making;  it  constitutes  an  essential  part 
of  the  practical  availability  of  language." 

If  a  knowledge  of  Greek  and  Latin  is  necessary  to  him 
who  would  command  all  the  resources  of  our  tongue,  how 
comes  it  that  the  most  consummate  mastery  of  the  English 
language  is  exhibited  b}^  Shakespeare?  Will  it  be  said 
that  his  writings  prove  him  to  have  been  a  classical 
scholar;  that  they  abound  in  facts  and  allusions  which 
imply  an  intimate  acquaintance  with   the  masterpieces  of 


THE    SECRET   OF    APT    WORDS.  235 

Greek  and  Roman  literature?  We  answer  that  this  is  a 
palpable  begging  of  the  question.  By  the  same  reason- 
ing we  can  prove  that  scores  of  English  authors,  who,  we 
know  positively,  never  read  a  page  of  Latin  or  Greek, 
were,  nevertheless,  classical  scholars.  By  similar  logic  we 
can  prove  that  Shakespeare  followed  every  calling  in  life. 
Lawyers  vouch  for  his  acquaintance  with  law;  physicians 
for  his  skill  in  medicine;  mad-doctors  for  his  knowledge 
of  the  phenomena  of  mental  disease;  naturalists  assert 
positively,  from  the  internal  evidence  of  his  works,  that 
he  was  a  botanist  and  an  entomologist;  bishops,  that  he 
was  a  theologian;  and  claims  have  been  put  forth  for  his 
dexterity  in  cutting  up  sheep  and  bullocks.  Ben  Jonson 
tells  us  that  he  had  "small  Latin  and  less  Greek"; 
another  contemporary,  that  he  had  "  little  Latin  and  no 
Greek."  "Small  Latin,"  indeed,  it  must  have  been  which 
a  youth  could  have  acquired  in  his  position,  who  married 
and  entered  upon  the  duties  of  active  life  at  eighteen. 
The  fact  that  translations  were  abundant  in  the  poet's 
time,  and  that  all  the  literature  of  that  day  was  steeped 
in  classicism,  will  fully  account  for  Shakespeare's  knowl- 
edge of  Greek  and  Roman  history,  as  well  as  for  the  clas- 
sical turns  of  expression  which  we  find  in  his  plays. 

But  it  may  be  said  that  Shakespeare,  the  oceanic,  the 
many-souled,  was  phenomenal,  and  that  no  rule  can  be 
based  on  the  miracles  of  a  cometary  genius  who  has  had 
no  peer  in  the  ages.  What  shall  we  say,  then,  to  Tzaak 
Walton?  Can  purer,  more  idiomatic,  or  more  attractive 
English  be  found  within  the  covers  of  any  book  than 
that  of  "The  Complete  Angler"?  Among  all  the  contro- 
versialists of  England,  is  there  one  whose  words  hit  hard- 
er,—  are  more  like  cannon-balls, —  than  those  of  Cobbett? 


2;iG  WORDS;    TIIEIIl    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

By  universal  concession  he  was  master  of  the  whole  vocab- 
ulary of  invective,  and  in  narration  his  pen  is  pregnant 
with  the  freshness  of  green  fields  and  woods;  yet  neither 
he,  nor  "honest  Izaak,"  ever  dug  up  a  Greek  root,  or 
unearthed  a  Latin  derivation.  Let  any  one  compare  a 
page  of  Cobbett  with  a  page  of  Bentley,  the  great  clas- 
sical critic,  and  he  will  find  that  the  former  writer  excels 
the  latter  alike  in  clearness  and  precision  of  terms,  in 
grammatical  accuracy,  and  in  the  construction  of  his 
periods.  Again,  what  shall  we  say  of  Keats,  who  couM 
not  read  a  line  of  Greek,  3'et  who  was  the  most  thor- 
oughly classical  of  all  English  authors, —  whose  soul  was 
so  saturated  with  the  Greek  spirit,  that  Byron  said  "  he 
was  a  Greek  himself"?  Or  what  will  the  classicists  do 
with  Lord  Ei'skine,  confessedly  the  greatest  forensic  orator 
since  Demosthenes?  He  learned  but  the  elements  of  Latin, 
and  in  Greek  went  scarcely  beyond  the  alphabet;  but  he 
devoted  himself  in  youth  with  intense  ardor  to  the  study 
of  Milton  and  Shakespeare,  committing  whole  pages  of  the 
former  to  memory,  and  so  familiarizing  himself  with  the 
latter  that  he  could  almost,  like  Person,  have  held  con- 
versations on  all  subjects  for  days  together  in  the  phrases 
of  the  great  English  dramatist.  It  was  here  that  he 
acquired  that  fine  choice  of  words,  that  richness  of  thought 
and  gorgeousness  of  expression,  that  beautiful  rhythmus 
of  his  sentences,  which  charmed  all  who  heard  him. 

If  one  must  learn  English  through  the  Greek  and 
Latin,  how  shall  we  account  for  the  admirable, —  we  had 
almost  said,  inimitable, —  style  of  Franklin?  Before  he 
knew  anything  of  foreign  languages  he  had  formed  his 
style,  and  gained  a  wide  command  of  words  by  the  study 
of   the    best   English    models.     Is    the    essayist,  Edwin    P. 


THE   SECRET   OF    APT    WORDS.  237 

Whipple,  a  master  of  the  English  language?  He  was 
not,  we  believe,  classically  educated,  yet  few  Ainei'ican 
authors  have  a  greater  command  of  all  the  resources  of 
expression.  His  style  varies  in  excellence, —  sometimes, 
pei'haps,  lacks  simplicity;  but,  as  a  rule,  it  is  singularly 
copious,  nervous,  and  suggestive,  and  clear  as  a  pebbled 
rill.  What  is  the  secret  of  this  command  of  our  tongue? 
It  is  his  familiarity  with  our  English  literature.  His 
sleepless  intellect  has  fed  and  fattened  on  the  whole  race 
of  English  authors,  from  Chaucer  to  Currer  Bell.  The 
profound,  sagacious  wisdom  of  Bacon,  and  the  nimble, 
brilliant  wit  of  Sydney  Smith;  the  sublime  mysticism  of 
Sir  Thomas  Browne,  and  the  rich,  mellow,  tranquil  beaut}^ 
of  Taylor;  Jonson's  learned  sock  and  Heywood's  ease;  the 
gorgeous,  organ-toned  eloquence  of  Milton,  and  the  close, 
bayonet-like  logic  of  Chillingworth ;  the  sweet-blooded  wit 
of  Fuller,  and  Butler's  rattling  fire  of  fun;  Spenser's  vo- 
luptuous beauty,  and  the  lofty  rhetoric,  scorching  wit,  and 
crushing  argument  of  South;  Pope's  neatness,  brillianc}', 
and  epigrammatic  point,  and  Dryden's  energy  and  "full 
resounding  line";  Byron's  sublime  unrest  and  bursts  of 
misanthropy,  and  Wordsworth's  deep  sentiment  and  sweet 
humanities;  Shelley's  wild  imaginative  melody,  and  Scott's 
picturesque  imagery  and  antiquarian  lore;  the  polished 
witticisms  of  Sheridan,  and  the  gorgeous  periods  of  Burke, 
—  with  all  these  writers,  and  every  other  of  greater  or 
lesser  note,  even  those  in  the  hidden  nooks  and  crannies 
of  our  literature,  he  has  held  converse,  and  drawn  from 
them  expressions  for  every  exigency  of  his  thought. 

To  all  these  examples  we  may  add  one,  if  possible,  still 
more  convincing, —  that  of  the  late  Hugh  Miller,  who,  as 
Professor  Marsh  justly  renuirks,  had  few  contemporaneous 


238  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

superiors  as  a  clear,  forcible,  accurate,  and  eloquent  writer, 
and  who  uses  the  most  cumbrous  Greek  vonipounds  as  freely 
as  monosyllabic  English  particles.  His  style  is  literally 
the  despair  of  all  other  English  scientific  writers;  yet  it 
is  positively  certain  that  he  was  wholly  ignorant  of  all 
languages  but  that  in  which  he  wrote,  and  its  Northern 
provincial  dialects. 

As  to  the  oft-quoted  saying  of  Goethe,  to  which  the 
objector  is  so  fond  of  referring,  we  may  say  with  Professor 
Marsh,  that,  "  if  by  knowledge  of  a  language  is  meant  the 
power  of  expressing  or  conceiving  the  laws  of  a  language 
in  formal  rules,  the  opinion  may  be  well  founded;  but,  if 
it  refers  to  the  capacity  of  understanding,  and  skill  in 
properly  using  our  own  tongue,  all  observation  shows  it 
to  be  very  wide  of  the  truth."  Goethe  himself,  the  same 
authoi'ity  declares,  was  an  indifferent  linguist;  he  appar- 
ently knew  little  of  the  remoter  etymological  sources  of 
his  own  tongue,  or  the  special  philologies  of  the  cognate 
languages;  and  "it  is  difficult  to  trace  any  of  the  excel- 
lencies of  his  marvellously  felicitous  style  to  the  direct 
imitation,  or  even  the  unconscious  influence  of  foreign 
models."*  But  he  was  a  profound  student  of  the  great 
German  writers  of  the  sixteenth  century;  and  hence  his 
works  are  a  test  example  in  refutation  of  the  theory  that 
ascribes  so  exaggerated  a  value  to  classical  studies. 

It  is  a  remarkable  fact,  which  throws  a  flood  of  light 
upon  this  subject,  that  the  greatest  masters  of  style  in  all 
the  ages  were  the  Greeks,  who  yet  knew^  no  word  of  any 
language  but  their  own.  In  the  most  flourishing  period 
of  their  literature,  they  had  no  grammatical  system,  nor 
did    they  ever  make  any  but  the    most    trivial    researches 

*  "Lectures  on  the  English  Language." 


THE    SECRET    OF    APT    WORDS.  239 

in  etymology.  "  The  wise  and  learned  nations  among  the 
ancients,"  says  Locke,  "  made  it  a  part  of  education  to  cul- 
tivate their  own,  not  foreign  languages.  The  Greeks 
counted  all  other  nations  barbarous,  and  had  a  contempt 
for  their  languages.  And  though  the  Greek  learning  grew 
in  credit  among  the  Romans,  .  .  .  yet  it  was  the  Roman 
tongue  that  was  made  the  study  of  their  youth;  their  own 
language  they  were  to  make  use  of,  and  therefore  it  was 
their  own  language  they  were  instructed  and  exercised  in." 
Demosthenes,  the  greatest  master  of  the  Greek  language, 
and  one  of  the  mightiest  masters  of  expression  the  world 
has  seen,  knew  no  other  tongue  than  his  own.  He  mod- 
elled his  style  after  that  of  Thucydides,  whose  wonderful 
compactness,  terseness,  and  strength  of  diction  were  de- 
rived from  no  study  of  old  Pelasgic,  Phoenician,  Persian, 
or  other  primitive  etymologies  of  the  Attic  speech, —  of 
which  he  knew  nothing, —  but  were  the  product  of  his 
own  marvellous  genius  wreaking  itself  upon  expression. 

No  riches  are  without  inconvenience.  The  men  of 
many  tongues  almost  inevitably  lose  their  peculiar  raciness 
of  home-bred  utterance,  and  their  style,  like  their  words, 
has  a  certain  polyglot  character.  It  has  been  observed  by 
an  acute  Oxford  professor  that  the  Romans,  in  exact  pro- 
portion to  their  study  of  Greek,  paralyzed  some  of  the 
finest  powers  of  their  own  language.  Schiller  tells  us 
that  he  was  in  the  habit  of  reading  as  little  as  possible 
in  foreign  languages,  because  it  was  his  business  to  write 
German,  and  he  thought  that,  by  reading  other  languages, 
he  should  lose  his  nicer  perceptions  of  what  belonged  to 
his  own.  Dryden  attributed  most  of  Cowley's  defects  to 
his  continental  associations,  and  said  that  his  losses  at 
home  overbalanced  his  gains  from  abroad.     Thomas  Moore, 


240  words;  tiikii;  use  and  abuse. 

who  was  a  fine  classical  scholar,  tells  us  that  the  perfect 
purity  with  which  the  Greeks  wrote  their  own  language 
was  justly  attributed  to  their  entire  abstinence  from 
every  other.  It  is  a  saying  as  old  as  Cicero  that  women, 
being  accustomed  solely  to  their  native  tongue,  usually 
speak  and  write  it  with  a  grace  and  purity  surpassing 
those  of  men.  "A  man  who  thinks  the  knowledge  of 
Latin  essential  to  the  purity  of  English  diction,"  says 
Macaulay,  "  either  has  never  conversed  with  an  accom- 
plished woman,  or  does  not  deserve  to  have  conversed 
with  her.  We  are  sure  that  all  persons  who  are  in  the 
habit  of  hearing  public  speaking  must  have  observed  that 
the  orators  who  are  fondest  of  quoting  Latin  are  by  no 
means  the  most  scrupulous  about  marring  their  native 
tongue.  We  could  mention  several  members  of  Par- 
liament, who  never  fail  to  usher  in  their  scraps  of  Horace 
and  Juvenal  with  half-a-dozen  false  concords." 

Mr.  Buckle,  in  his  "History  of  Civilization  in  England," 
does  not  hesitate  to  express  the  opinion  that  "  our  great 
English  scholars  have  corrupted  the  English  language  by 
jargon  so  uncouth  that  a  plain  man  can  hardly  discern 
the  real  lack  of  ideas  which  their  barbarous  and  mottled 
dialect  strives  to  hide."  He  then  adds  that  the  principal 
reason  why  well  educated  women  write  and  converse  in 
a  purer  style  than  well  educated  men,  is  "because  they 
have  not  formed  their  taste  according  to  those  ancient 
classical  standards,  which,  admirable  as  they  are  in  them- 
selves, should  never  be  introduced  into  a  state  of  society 
unfitted  for  them."  To  nearly  the  same  eflPect  is  the 
declaration  of  that  most  acute  judge  of  style,  Thomas  De 
Quincey,  who  says  that  if  you  would  read  our  noble  lan- 
guage  in   its    native    beauty,   picturesque   form,    idiomatic 


THE    SECRET   OF    APT    WORDS.  241 

propriety,  racy  in  its  phraseology,  delicate  yet  sinewj-  in 
its  composition,  you  must  steal  the  mail-hags,  and  hreak 
open  the  women's  letters.  On  the  other  hand,  who  has 
forgotten  what  havoc  Bentley  made  when  he  laid  his 
classic  hand  on  "Paradise  Lost"?  What  prose  style, 
always  excepting  that  of  the  "Areopagitica,"  is  worse  for 
imitation  than  that  of  Milton,  with  its  long,  involved, 
half-rhythmical  periods,  "  dragging,  like  a  wounded  snake, 
their  slow  length  along"?  Yet  Bentley  and  Milton, 
whose  minds  were  imbued,  saturated  with  Greek  lit- 
erature through  and  through,  were  probably  the  pro- 
foundest  classical  scholars  that  England  can  boast.  Let 
the  student,  then,  who  has  a  patriotic  love  for  his  native 
tongue,  study  it  in  its  most  idiomatic  writers,  and 
beware  lest  while  he  is  wandering  in  fancy  along  the 
banks  of  the  Meander,  the  Ilyssus,  or  the  Tiber,  or  drink- 
ing at  the  fountains  of  Helicon,  he  heedlessly  and  pro- 
fanely trample  under  foot  the  beautiful,  fragrant,  and 
varied  productions  of  his  own  land. 


CHAPTER  X. 


ONOMATOPES. 


'Tis  not  enough  no  harshness  gives  offence; 

The  sound  niusit  seem  an  echo  to  the  sense.— Pope. 

Our  bhinted  senses  can  no  more  realize  the  original  delicacy  r.f  the  appel- 
lative faculty,  than  they  can  attain  to  the  keen  perfection  in  which  they  still 
exist  in  the  savage. — Lei'sius. 


TTTHATEVER  opinion  we  have  of  the  onomatopoeia 
'  '  theory  of  the  origin  of  language,  so  ably  advocated 
by  Farrar,  Wedgwood,  and  Whitney,  and  so  keenly  ridi- 
culed by  Max  MUller  and  others,  it  is  impossible  to  deny 
that  there  is  a  natural  relationship  between  thought  and 
articulate  sound, — in  other  words  that  certain  sounds  are 
the  natural  expression  of  certain  sensations,  and  of  mental 
states  that  are  analogous  to  those  sensations.  All  lan- 
guages contain  words  which,  in  their  very  structure  as 
composite  sounds,  more  or  less  nearly  resemble  in  quality, 
as  soft  or  harsh,  the  sounds  they  designate.  Such,  in  our 
language,  are  words  representing  animal  sounds,  as  quack, 
cackle,  roar,  whinn}^  bellow,  caw,  croak,  hiss,  screech,  etc.; 
words  representing  inarticulate  human  sounds,  as  laugh, 
cough,  sob,  shriek,  whoop,  etc.;  sounds  representing  the 
collision  of  hard  bodies,  as  clap,  rap,  tap,  slap,  etc.;  sounds 
representing  the  collision  of  softer  bodies,  as  dab,  dub, 
thud,  dub-a-dub;  sounds  representing  motion  through  the 
air,  as  whizz,  buzz,  sough,  etc. ;  sounds  representing  reso- 
nance, as  clang,  knell,  ring,  twang,  etc. ;    and  sounds   rep- 

242 


OXOMATOPES,  213 

resenting  the  motion  of  liquids,  as  clash,  splash,  dash,  etc.* 
Even  the  various  degrees  of  intensity  in  sound  are  ex- 
pressed by  modifications  of  the  vowels, —  high  notes  being 
represented  by  /,  low,  broad  sounds  by  a,  and  diminution  by 
the  change  of  a  or  o  to  /;  while  continuance  is  expressed 
by  a  reduplication  of  syllables,  as  in  murmur,  etc.,  and  by 
the  addition  of  r  and  /,  as  in  grab,  grapple,  wrest,  wrestle, 
crack,  crackle,  dab,  dabble.  Animals  are  often  named, 
upon  the  same  principle,  from  their  cries,  birds  especially, 
as  we  see  in  whip-poor-will,  cuckoo,  crow,  quail,  curlew, 
chough,  owl,  peewit,  turtle,  and  many  others.  Again,  we 
find  that,  independently  of  all  confusion  between  a  word 
and  its  associations,  words  having  a  harsh  signification 
generally  have  a  rough,  harsh  form,  while  words  that 
denote  something  soft  and  pleasing,  or  sweet  and  tender, 
seem  to  breathe  the  very  sensation  they  describe.  The 
various  passions  of  men  naturally  find  expression  in  dif- 
ferent sounds.  Anger,  vehemence,  gentleness,  etc.,  have 
each  a  language,  a  style  of  utterance,  peculiar  to  them- 
selves. Love  and  sorrow  prompt  smooth,  melodious  ex- 
pressions, while  violent  emotions  express  themselves  in 
words  that  are  hurried,  abrupt  and  harsh. 

Were  further  proof  wanting  of  this  connection  between 
external  sounds  and  the  processes  of  the  mind,  it  is  supplied 
in  the  strongest  form  by  the  fact  that  the  different  lan- 
guages of  the  earth  are  stamped  with  marks  of  predomi- 
nant local  influences, —  of  the  climate,  scenery,  and  other 
physical  conditions  amid  which  the}'  have  been  evolved. 
Rousseau,  a  century  ago,  called  attention  to  the  fact  that 
the  languages  of   the  rich  and  prodigal  South,  being  tlie 

♦Tliis  classification  is  from  Furrar,  who  has  ubriiljid   it  from  Wedgwood, 
In   Phil.  Truus.  11.,  lia. 


244  WORDS;   THKiit   i:.sf,  and  aiu'SE. 

daughters  of  passion,  are  poetic  and  musical,  while  those  of 
the  North,  the  daughters  of  necessity,  bear  a  trace  of  their 
hard  origin,  and  express  by  rude  sounds  rude  sensations. 
Who  does  not  discern  in  tlie  "  soft  and  vowelled  under- 
song"  of  the  Italian  the  effect  of  a  climate  altogether 
different  from  that  which  has  produced  the  stridulous, 
hirrient  roughness  of  the  German,  the  Dutch,  and  the 
Russian  tongues  ?  What  but  different  geographical  posi- 
tions has  made  the  language  of  the  South-Sea  Islanders  so 
different  from  the  dissonant  clicks  of  the  Hottentot,  or  the 
guttural  polysyllables  of  the  Cherokee?  What  other  cause 
has  made  the  language  of  the  Tlascalans,  the  hardy  and 
independent  mountaineers  dwelling  in  the  high  volcanic 
regions  between  Mexico  and  Vera  Cruz,  so  much  rougher 
than  the  polished  Tezucan,  or  the  popular  dialect  of  the 
Aztecs,  who  are  of  the  same  family  as  the  mountaineers  V 
It  is  because  the  vocal  organs,  which  are  formed  with 
exceeding  delicacy,  are  affected  by  the  most  trifling  physical 
influences,  that  English  is  spoken  in  Devonshire,  England, 
with  a  splutter,  and  in  Suffolk  with  an  attenuated  whine; 
that  the  language  spoken  in  the  northern  counties  is 
harsher  than  that  spoken  in  the  southern;  and  that  in  the 
mountainous  regions  we  find  a  harsher  dialect  than  we 
hear  in  the  plains. 

The  manner  in  which  words  are  formed  by  means  of  the 
imitations  of  natural  sounds  is  illustrated  by  the  word 
"cock"  which  is  considered  by  etymologists  to  be  an  abbre- 
viated imitation  of  chanticleer's  "cock-a-doodle-doo!"' 
From  the  name  of  the  animal,  which  is  thus  derived  from 
its  cry,  and  then  generalized  and  made  fruitful  in  deriva- 
tives, come,  by  allusion  to  the  bird's  pride  and  strut,  the 
words   "  coquette,"    "  cockade,"  the  "  cock "  of  a  gun,  to 


ONOMATOPES.  245 

"  cock  "  one's  e\'e,  to  "  cock  "  the  liead  on  one  side,  a  "  cocked  " 
hat,  a  "cock"  of  hay,  a  "  cock  "-swain,  a  "  cock  "-boat,  the 
"  cock  "  of  a  balance,  and  so  on.  It  is  in  all  probability  by 
this  method  more  than  by  any  other,  that  words  were 
produced  in  all  the  earlier  stages  of  language,  while  the 
interjectional  or  exclamatory  principle  was,  doubtless,  next 
in  importance. 

It  is  sometimes  objected  to  the  theory  of  the  extensive 
use  of  onomatopoeia  in  the  formation  of  language,  that, 
were  it  true,  we  should  find  in  the  different  languages  of 
the  earth  a  greater  identity  than  actually  exists  in  the 
terms  expressive  of  physical  facts.  We  should  not  find 
words  so  unlike  as  "  bang  "  in  English  and  pouf  in  French, 
employed  to  denote  the  sound  of  a  gun;  or  ypij/JM^  in 
Greek,  quirquirra  in  the  Basque,  and  sirsor  in  Chinese, 
used  as  names  for  the  grasshopper.  Why,  if  the  theory  in 
question  be  true,  do  we  find  a  clap  of  thunder  called  in 
Sanscrit  vagragvala,  in  Gaelic  tairneanach.,  in  Bohemian 
hromobitz,  in  Icelandic  thruma  ?  Why  does  Coleridge  sing 
of  the  nightingale's  "  murmurs  musical  and  sweet  jug- 
jay,''  while  Tennyson  says  that  "  WJiit,  whit,  ichit,  in  the 
bush  beside  me,  chirrupt  the  nightingale"? 

The  answer  to  this  is,  that  man  in  naming  things  does 
not  attempt  to  reproduce  the  identical  sound  which  he 
hears,  but  artistically  to  reproduce  it,  or  rather  the  itnpres- 
sion  which  it  has  made,  just  as  a  painter  often  deviates 
from  the  actual  colors  of  nature,  and  paints  a  picture  more 
or  less  ideal,  to  enhance  the  effect  of  his  art.  The  imita- 
tion is  not  a  dull,  literal  echo  of  the  sound,  but  an  echo  of 
the  impression  produced  by  it  on  the  human  intelligence; 
not  a  mere  spontaneous  repercussion  of  the  perception 
received,  but   a    repercussion    modified    organicaUij  by  the 


'■Z4c()  woiiDs;   TiiHiu  rsK  and  aiuse. 

configurations  of  the  mouth,  and  ideally  by  the  nature  of 
the  analogy  perceived  between  the  sound  and  the  object  it 
expresses.  *  These  I'epercussions,  moreover,  have  been 
greatly  blurred  by  the  lapse  of  ages, —  so  much  so,  in  many 
cases,  as  to  be  indistinguishable.  Again,  we  must  remem- 
ber that  the  impressions  made  by  the  same  sounds  on  diti'er- 
ent  minds,  and  even  on  the  same  mind  in  ditlerent  moods, 
will  greatly  vary;  and  that  in  naming  objects  from  other 
characteristics  than  the  sound,  different  characteristics  are 
chosen  by  different  peoples.  According  to  the  mental  con- 
stitution, the  preponderance  of  reason  or  imagination,  for 
example,  in  the  name-giver,  or  particular  experiences  in 
-connection  with  the  object,  the  designating  qualit}'  which 
is  deemed  most  fit  to  furnish  the  name  for  it  will  vary. 
Thus  it  happens  that  in  Sanscrit  there  is  a  great  variety  of 
names  for  the  elephant,  such  as  the  "  hand-possessing " 
animal,  the  "toothed,"  the  "two-tusked,"  the  "great- 
toothed,"  the  "  pounder,"  the  "  roarer,"  the  "  forest-roarer," 
the  "  mailed,"  the  "  twice-drinking,"  the  "  mountain-born," 
the  "  vagabond,"  and  many  others.  Thus  it  happens  that 
in  Arabic  there  are  five  hundred  names  for  the  lion,  two 
hundred  for  the  serpent,  and  not  less  than  a  thousand  for 
the  sword.  The  nightingale  is  said  to  have  twenty  distinct 
articulations;  and  if  this  is  true,  we  should  expect  that  in 
the  different  languages  of  Europe  it  would  have  different 
names.  The  old  poets  all  speak  of  the  nightingale's  song 
as  "  most  melanchol}',"  but  in  modern  verse  we  read  of 

"the  merry  nightingale 
That  crowds  and  hurries  and  precipitates 
With  fast  thick  warble  its  delicious  notes." 

So  w^ith   thunder;   the   impression   it   makes   upon   hearers 
♦"Chapters  on  Language"'  by  Rev.  F.  W.  Farrar,  D.D.,  F.R.S. 


ONOMATOPES.  247 

varies  with  the  varying  qualities  of  their  minds.  To  one 
man  it  is  a  dull  rumble,  to  another  a  crackling  explosion, 
and  to  a  third  a  sudden  flashing  of  light.  As  Archdeacon 
Farrar  finely  says:  "  What  the  eye  sees  and  the  ear  hears 
depends  in  no  small  measure  on  the  brain  and  the  heart. 
The  hieroglyphics  of  nature,  like  the  inscriptions  on  the 
swords  of  Vathek,  vary  with  every  eye  that  glances  on 
them;  her  voices,  like  the  voice  of  Helen  to  the  ambushed 
Greeks,  take  not  one  tone  of  their  own,  but  the  tone  that 
each  hearer  loves  best  to  hear,"  * 

Though  a  large  part  of  language  has  been  formed  in 
the  way  I  have  named,  yet  it  must  be  admitted  that  few 
words,  compared  with  the  whole  number,  bear  upon  their 
face  unmistakable  traces  of  their  origin.  The  explanation 
of  this  lies  in  the  great  changes  which  phonetic  corruption 
effects  in  language.  No  sooner  do  men  coin  a  word,  than 
they  instinctively  and  unconsciously  seek  to  rid  it  of  its 
superfluous  lettei'S,  and  in  other  ways  to  economize  the 
time  and  labor  expended  upon  its  utterance;  and  if  they 
are  obliged  to  use  a  new  or  strange  word,  which  conveys 
no  intrinsic  meaning  to  them,  they  try  to  give  it  a  mean- 
ing by  so  changing  it  as  to  remove  its  arbitrai-y  character. 
(See  "  Words  of  Illusive  Etymology,"  in  Chapter  on  the 
"Curiosities  of  Language.")  Thus  words,  in  the  course  of 
ages,  are  rolled  and  rubbed  out  of  shape,  like  the  pebbles 
which  are  rubbed  and  rounded  into  smoothness  by  the  sea 
waves  "on  a  shingly  beach,  until  at  last,  though  once  plainly 
imitative,  they  lose  all  trace  of  their  sensuous  origin. 
Who,  without  knowledge  of  the  intermediate  diunius  and 
(jiovno,  would  for  a  moment  suspect  that  jour  could  be 
derived  from  dies;  or  would  suppose,  if  he  had  not  traced 

♦"Chapters  on  Language,"  p.  104. 


248  words;  tiiehi  use  and  abuse. 

the  etymology  of  "  musket,"  that  it  is  derived  from  the 
onomatope,  musso,  "I  buz/"?  But,  notwithstanding  all 
this,  and  though  in  the  progress  of  scientific  culture  lan- 
guage becomes  more  and  more  abstract, —  that  is,  words 
having  no  natural  connection  with  the  thoughts  ai-e  used 
more  and  more  arbitrarily  to  represent  them,  just  as 
algebraic  signs  represent  mathematical  relations, —  still 
language  never  loses  wholly  its  original  imitative  char- 
acter. It  will  always,  therefore,  be  a  signal  excellence 
of  style  when  thought  and  emotion  are  represented  by 
imitative  expressions, —  that  is,  by  means  of  pictures  or 
images  of  sensible  things  and  events.  The  sound  then 
points  to  the  external  object  or  event,  or  some  sensible 
property  or  characteristic  of  it,  and  this,  again,  to  the 
mental  state  or  thought  which  it  is  taken  to  represent. 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  poets,  from  Homer  to 
Tennyson,  abound  in  onomatopes, —  in  words  and  com- 
binations of  words  in  which  the  sound  is  an  echo  to  the 
sense.  These  words  are  not  only  the  most 'vivid,  the  most 
passionate,  and  the  most  picturesque,  but  they  are  the  only 
ones  which  are  instantl}?^  intelligible,  and  which  possess  an 
inherently  graphic  power.  The  power  of  poetry  lies  largely 
in  the  fact  that,  as  Bunsen  says,  it  "  reproduces  the  original 
process  of  the  mind  in  which  language  originates.  The 
coinage  of  words  is  the  primitive  poem  of  humanit}',  and 
the  imageiy  of  poetry  and  oratory  is  possible  and  effective 
only  because  it  is  a  continuation  of  that  primitive  process 
which  is  itself  a  reproduction  of  creation." 

Dyer,  in  bis  "  Ruins  of  Rome,"  thus  exemplifies,  in  a 
passage  quoted  with  praise  by  Johnson,  the  beauty  and 
force  imparted  to  style  by  the  adaptation  of  the  sounds 
to  the  object  described: 


ONOMATOPES.  249 

"The  pil^^rim  oft 
At  dead  of  night,  "mid  his  oraisoii,  hears 
Aghast  Ihe  voice  of  time;   disparting  towers 
Tumbling  all  prec'ipi/a/e  down  dashed. 
Rattling  around,  loud  thundering  to  the  moon."' 

Nut  onl}^  single  words,  but  an  entire  sentence,  or  a 
series  of  sentences,  may  resemble  the  sound  represented; 
as  in  the  following  description  of  the  abode  of  Sleep,  in 
Spenser: 

"And  more  to  hill  him  in  his  slumbers  soft, 
A  trickling  stream  from  high  rocks  tumbling  downe, 
And  ever-drizzling  rain  upon  the  loft, 
Mixed  with  a  murmuring  wind  much  like  the  sowne 
Of  swarming  bees,  did  cast  him  in  a  swoone: 
No  other  noise,  nor  people's  troublous  cries, 
As  still  are  wont  t'  annoy  the  walled  towne. 
Might  there  be  heard;  but  careless  Quiet  lies. 
Wrapped  in  eternal  silence,  far  from  enemies." 

An  intelligent  writer  reminds  us  that  in  reading  this 
stanza,  we  ought  to  humor  it  with  a  corresponding  tone  of 
voice,  lowering  or  deepening  it,  "  as  though  we  were  going 
to  bed  ourselves,  or  thinking  of  the  rainy  night  that  had 
lulled  us."  He  suggests  also  that  attention  to  the  accent 
and  pause  in  the  last  line  will  make  us  feel  the  depth 
and  distance  of  the  scene.  Another  illustration  is  fur- 
nished by  the  well  known  lines  of  Pope: 

"Soft  is  the  stream  when  Zephyr  gently  blows, 
And  the  smooth  stream  in  smoother  numbers  flows; 
But  when  loud  surges  lash  the  sounding  sliore, 
The  hoarse,  rough  verse  should  like  the  torrent  roar. 
When  Ajax  strives  some  rock's  vast  weiglit  to  throw, 
The  line  too  labors,  and  the  words  move  slow; 
Not  so  when  swift  Camilla  scours  the  i)lain. 
Flies  o'er  the  unbending  corn,  and  skims  along  the  main." 

More  striking  still,  in  some  respects,  is  Christopher 
Pitt's  translation  of  the  corresponding  passage  in  Vida's 
"Art  of  Poetry": 


250  M'OKDS;    THEIR    rSE    AND    AP.rSE. 

"When  things  are  sniall  the  terms  shoiiKI  utill  be  so, 
For  low  words  plcane  ns,  w'.ieii  the  thunie  is  low. 
Bid  when  some  giant,  hoinhle  and  (j  iiii. 
Enormous  in  his  gait,  and  vast  in  evenj  limb. 
Comes  towering  on;  the  swelling  words  mnst  rise 
In  just  proportion  to  tlie  monster's  size. 
If  some  l:irj,'e  weight  his  huge  arms  strive  to  shove, 
Tlie  verse  too  labors;  the  thronged  words  scarce  move. 

***** 
But  if  the  poem  suffer  from  delay, 
Let  the  lines  Jly  precipitate  away; 
And  when  the  viper  issues  from  the  bralce. 
Be  quick;  with  stones  and  brands  and  Jire  attack 
IBs  rising  crest,  and  drive  the  serpent  back.''' 

The  overflowing  of  the  fourth  line  in  this  passage,  the 
abrupt  termination  of  the  middle  of  the  next  line,  the 
pause  at  "Be  quick!"  and  the  rapidity  of  the  last  four 
lines,  are  exceedingly  happy.  The  illustration  of  rapid 
motion  is  far  superior  to  the  last  long  and  sprawling  line 
of  Pope,  in  which  the  preponderance  of  liquids  and  sibi- 
lants detains  the  voice  too  much,  while  it  is  further  im- 
peded by  the  word  "  unbending, —  one  of  the  most  slug- 
gish, as  Johnson  truly  says,  in  the  language. 

How  felicitous  are  "  the  hoarse  Trinacrian  shore "  of 
Milton,  and  his  description  of  the  rapid  motion  and  grating 
noise  with  which  Hell's  gates  are  opened! — 

"On  a  sudden,  open  fly 
With  impetuou.f  recoil,  and  jarring  sound. 
The  infernal  doors,  and  on  their  hinges  grate 
Harsh  thunder,  that  tlie  lowest  bottom  shook 
Of  Erebus."' 

\yhat  can  be  more  expressive  than  this  representation 
of  the  sounds  of  a  battle  in  ancient  times'?  — 

"  Arms  on  armor  clashing  bray'd 
Horrible  discord ;  and  the  madding  wheels 
Of  brazen  chariots  raged," 


ONOMATOPES.  251 

How  effective  is  the  pause  after  the  word  "  shook  "  in 
these  lines! — 

"  And  over  them  triumphant  Death  his  dart 
Shook,  but  delayed  to  strike." 

Discordant  sounds  are  vividly  described  in  this  line 
from  "Lycidas": 

"Grate  on  their  scrannel  pipes  of  wretched  straw." 

Two  of  the  most  perfect  examples  of  imitative  har- 
mony in  our  literature  are  Wordsworth's  couplet, 

"And  see  the  children  shouting  on  the  shore. 
And  hear  the  mighty  waters  rolling  evermore," 

and    Byron's    vivid    description    of    a    storm    among    the 
mountains: 

"  Far  along 
From  peak  to  peak,  the  rattling  crags  among. 
Leaps  the  live  thunder  1'' 

The  numerous  adaptations  of  sound  to  sense  in  Dry- 
den's  "  Ode  on  St.  Cecilia's  Day  "  are  familiar  to  all.  The 
following  verse,  from  a  song  in  his  "  King  Arthur,"  is  less 
hackneyed: 

"Come,  if  you  dare,  our  trumpets  sound; 
Come,  if  you  dare,  our  foes  rebound; 
We  come,  ive  come,  we  come,  we  come. 
Says  the  double,  double,  doable  beal  of  the  thundering  drum.'" 

No  modern  poet  has  made  a  more  frequent  or  a  more 
judicious  use  of  onomatopoeia  than  Tennyson.  "  The  Bugle 
Song,"  "The  Brook,"  "Tears,  Idle  Tears,"  and  "Break, 
Break,  Break,"  will  at  once  occur  to  the  [)oet"s  admirers 
as  iiuisterpieces  of  representative  art.  The  second  stanza 
of  the  "  Bugle  Song"  has  few  equals  in  ancient  or  modern 
verse: 

'  "O  hark,  O  hcarl  liow  tliin  and  clear, 

And  thinner,  clearer,  farther  going; 
O  sweet  and  fiir,   from  cliff  and  scar, 

The  horns  of  Elllaiul  faintly  blowing!' 
Blow,  let  us  hear  the  purple  glens  replying. 
Blow,  bugle;  answer  echoes,  dying,  dying,  dying." 


253  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

What  can  ))C  more  perfect  of  its  kind  than  tlie  picture 
of  llio  shock  of  a  mph'r,  when  the  combatants 

"  Closed 
In  ci.nflict  with  the  crash  of  !?hivering  i)oint9, 
And  thunder  .  .  . 

And  all  fho  plain,— brand,  mace,  and  phaft,  and  shield 
Shock'd,  like  an  iron -clanging  anvil  banged 
With  hammers;'^ 

or   tlie   picture   of  a   fleet  of  glass  wrecked  on  a  reef  of 

gold,  in  the  lines, — 

"For  the  fleet  drew  near, 
Touched,  clinked,  and  clanked,  and  vanished." 

Motion,  as  well  as  sound,  has  been  happily  imitated  in 
language, —  of  which  we  have  signal  examples  in  the  prog- 
ress of  Milton's  fiend,  whose  wearisome  journey  is  por- 
trayed by  this  artful  arrangement  of  words: 

"The  fiend 
O'er  bog,  or  steep,  through  strait,  rough,  dense,  or  rare, 
With  head,  hands,  wings,  or  feet,  pursues  his  way. 
And  swims,  or  sinks,  or  wades,  or  creeps,  or  flies;"' 

and    in   Pope's   translation   of  the   noted    passage   in   the 
"Odyssey"  describing  Sisyphus: 

"With  many  a  step  and  many  a  groan. 
Up  the  high  hill  he  heaves  a  huge  round  stone; 
The  huge  round  stone,  resulting  with  a  boiutd. 
Thunders  impetuous  down,  and  smokes  along  the  ground." 

In  reading  the  second  line,  with  its  frequent  recurrence 
of  the  aspirate,  one  seems  to  hear  the  giant  pantings 
and  groanings  of  Sisyphus;  and  a  similar  feeling  is  expe- 
rienced in  reading  the  following  line: 

"And  when  up  ten  steep  slopes  you've  dragged  your  thighs." 

Crowe,  the  now  foi'gotten  author  of  "  Lewisdon  Hill," 
fairly  rivals  Pope  in  the  closing  line  of  a  version  of  the 
foregoing  passage  in  the  "Odyssey": 

"A  sudden  force 
Turned  the  curst  stone,  and,  slipping  from  his  hold, 
Down  again,  down  the  steep  rebound  ng,  down  it  rolled." 


ONOMATOPES.  253 

An  able  literary  critic, —  the  Rev.  Robert  A.  Willmott, — 
has  thus  contrasted  the  majestic  and  easy  verse  of  Dryden 
with  the  "mellifluence"  of  Pope.  "'The  mellifluence  of 
Pope,'  as  Johnson  called  it,  has  the  defect  of  monotony. 
Exquisite  in  the  sweet  rising  and  falling  of  its  clauses,  it 
seldom  or  never  takes  the  ear  prisoner  by  a  musical  sur- 
lirise.  If  Pope  be  the  nightingale  of  our  verse,  he  dis- 
plays none  of  the  irregular  and  unexpected  gush  of  the 
songster.  He  has  no  variations.  The  tune  is  delicate, 
but  not  natural.  It  reminds  us  of  a  bird,  all  over  brill- 
iant, which  pipes  its  one  lay  in  a  golden  cage,  and  has 
forgotten  the  green  wood  in  the  luxury  of  confinement. 
But  Dryden's  versification  has  the  freedom  and  the  fresh- 
ness of  the  fields.  .  .  This  is  a  great  charm.  He  pi-eserved 
the  simple,  unpremeditated  graces  of  the  earlier  couplet, 
its  confluence  and  monosyllabic  close,  while  he  added  a 
dignity  and  a  splendor  unknown  before.  Pope's  modula- 
tion is  of  the  ear;  Dryden's  of  the  subject.  He  has  a 
different  tone  for  Iphigenia  slumbering  under  ti'ees,  by 
the  fountain  side;  for  the  startled  knight,  who  listens  to 
strange  sounds  within  the  glooms  of  the  wood;  and  for 
the  courtly  Beauty  to  whom  he  wafted  a  compliment." 

In  the  following  lines  from  "II  Penseroso,"  the  effect 
combines  both  sound  and  motion: 

"Oft  on  ii  plat  of  risking  ground. 
I  hear  the  far-ofi  curfRW  sound, 
•  Over  some  wide-watered  shore, 

Stringing  slow  with  sullen  7'oar.'" 

How  admirably  does  the  quick  and  joyous  movement 
of  the  following  lines  from  "  L'Allegro "  portray  the 
thing  described !  — 

"  Let  tlie  merry  bells  rewound 
And  the  Jocund  rehecUs  sound, 
To  m;iny  a  youth,  and  many  a  maid, 
Dancing  in  the  chequered  shade." 


254  AVORDS;    their    use    and    AI5USE. 

Hugo,  unwiclily  Imlk,  iin]ilying  slowness  of  movement, 
has  been  happily  ex[)re.ssed  by  Milton  in  the  sul)joinorl 
passages: 

"O'er  all  the  dreary  coasti? 
So,  stretched  out,  huge  in  length,  the  arch  fiond   lay." 

"But  ended  foul,  in  many  a  scaly  fold 
Voluminous  and  vcmt.  ' 

How  inflated  with  bulky  meaning  are  these  lines  from 
Shakespeare's  "Troilus  and  Cressida"!  — 

"The  large  Achilles,  on  his  pressed  bed  lolling, 
From  his  deep  chest  laughs  out  a  loud  applause." 

The  greatest  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  poets  have  em- 
ployed those  "  echoes  of  nature,"  the  onomatopes,  as  freely 
as  the  modern.  Every  schoolboy  is  familiar  with  the  words 
in  which  Virgil  describes  thunder, — '' Ifcrum  atqiio  itentin 
fragor  inionat  ingpus,'''  as  well  as  with  those  in  which  he 
represents  the  rapid  clatter  of  horses'  hoofs: 

"  Quadrupedante  putrem  sonitu  quatit  ungula  campum^''' 

and  the  vivid  words  in  which  Homer  recalls  the  snapping 
of  a  sword: 

Tpi-xOi  re  Ka\  Terpa^dl  6taTpu<^fv. 

Who  does  not  catch  the  hurtling  of  battle  in  the  same 
poet's 

<TKfTTT€T     oiuTiOV    Te    pOl^Ol'    Kol    SoVnOV    aKOVTUtV, 

and  a  murmur  of  ocean  in 

ef  o/caAappeiVao  pa9vpp6ov  ilxeavoio^ 

A  similar  eti'ect  is  produced  bv  his 

the  first  word  of  which  was  perhaps  intended  to  I'epresent 
the  roaring  of  the  wave  as  it  mounts  on  the  sea-shore, 
and  the  second  the  hissing  sound  of  a  receding  billow. 
Virgil's  description  of  the  Gyclopses  toiling  at  the  anvil; 
his  picture  of  the  Trojans  laborioush"  hewing  the  founda- 


ONOMATOPES.  255 

tions  of  a  tower  on  the  top  of  Priam's  palace,  and  its  sud- 
den and  violent  fall;  Ennius's  imitation  of  a  trumpet 
blast;  and  the  imitation  by  Aristophanes  of  the  croaking 
of  frogs, —  will  recur  to  the  classic  reader  as  other  exam- 
ples of  the  felicitous  use  of  this  figure  b\-  the  Greek  and 
Roman  writers. 

Paronomasia  and  alliteration  owe  their  ,subtle  beauty  to 
the  fact  that  in  using  them  the  writer  has  reference  to 
words  considered  as  sounds.  Though  an  excess  of  either 
is  offensive,  yet,  charily  used,  it  adds  a  surprising  force  to 
expression.  How  much  is  the  grandeur  of  the  effect  en- 
hanced by  the  repetition  of  the  s  in  the  following  lines 
from  Macbeth! — 

"  That  shall,  to  all  our  days  and  nights  to  come, 
Give  solely  sovereign  sway  and  niasterdom." 

Dr.  Johnson,  in  speaking  of  imitative  harmony,  ob- 
serves that  the  desire  of  discovering  frequent  adaptations 
of  the  sound  to  the  sense  "  has  produced  many  wild  con- 
ceits and  imaginary  beauties."  This  is  only  saying  that 
the  poet,  like  the  painter,  may  exaggerate  the  importance 
of  his  accessories,  while  he  gives  too  little  heed  to  his 
main  theme.  But  this  is  no  argument  against  the  legiti- 
mate use  of  any  subtle  or  peculiar  beauty  in  either  the 
pictorial  or  the  metrical  art.  There  are  many  cases  where 
it  is  impossible  to  use  language  which  is  specific,  vivid, 
and  appropriate,  without  employing  imitative  words.  For 
the  choice  of  these  words  no  rules  can  be  given;  only  an 
instinctive  and  exquisite  taste  can  enable  one  to  decide 
wlien  they  may  be  consciously  used,  and  when  they  should 
be  shunned.  But  he  who  can  use  onomatopoeia  with 
skill  and  judgment, —  who  can  call  into  play,  on  proper 
occasions,  that  swift  and  subtle  law  of  association  whereby 


256  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

a  reproduction  of  the  sounds  at  once  recalls  to  the  mind 
the  images  or  circumstances  with  which  they  are  con- 
nected,—  has  mastered  one  of  the  greatest  secrets  of  the 
writer's  art.  It  was  a  saying  of  Shenstone,  which  experi- 
ence confirms,  that  harmony  and  melody  of  style  have 
greater  weight  than  is  generally  imagined  in  our  judg- 
ments upon  writing  and  writers;  and,  as  a  proof  of  this, 
he  says  that  the  lines  of  poetry,  the  periods  of  prose,  and 
even  the  texts  of  Scripture  we  most  frequently  recollect 
and  quote,  are  those  which  are  preeminently  musical. 
The  following  magical  lines,  which  owe  their  interest  to 
the  cadence  hardly  less  than  to  their  imagery,  illustrate 
Shenstone's  remark: 

Youth  and  Age. 

"Flowers  are  lovely;  Love  is  flower-like; 
Friendship  is  a  sheltering  tree; 
Oh,  the  joys  that  came  down  shower-like, 
Of  Friendship,  Love,  and  Liberty, 
Ere  1  was  old  I 
Ere  I  was  old !  Ah,  woful  Ere  I 
Which  tells  me.  Youth's  no  longer  here  1 

0  Youth !  for  years  so  many  and  sweet, 
'Tis  known  that  thou  and  I  were  one; 

I'll  think  it  but  a  fond  conceit  — 

It  cannot  be  that  Thou  art  gone  I 
The  vesper  bell  hath  not  yet  tolled, 
And  thou  wert  aye  a  masker  bold ! 
What  strange  disguise  hast  now  put  on, 
To  make  believe  that  thou  art  gone? 

1  see  these  locks  in  silvery  slips, 
This  drooping  gait,  this  altered  size: 

But  spring-tide  blossoms  on  thy  lips, 

And  tears  take  sunshine  from  thine  eyes. 
Life  is  but  thought ;  so  think  I  will, 
That  Youth  and  I  are  house-mates  still." 


CHAPTER   XI. 

THE    FALLACIES   IN    WORDS. 

Garflons-noii?  dv  rc'quivofjuc!— Paul  Louis  Couriek. 

Words  are  grown   so  false,  I   am  loathe   to  prove   reason    with    them. — 
Shakespeaue. 

The  mixture  of  those  things  by  speech,  which  by  nature  are  divided,  is 
the  mother  of  all  error. — Hooker. 

One  vague  inflection  spoils  the  whole  with  doubt; 

One  trivial  letter  mine  all,  left  out ; 

A  knot  can  choke  a  felon  into  clay; 

A  knot  will  save  him,  ?pelt  without  the  k; 

The  smallest  word  has  some  unguarded  spot. 

And  danger  lurks  in  i  without  a  dot.— O.  W.  IIolmes. 

ON  some  of  the  great  American  rivers,  where  lumber- 
ing operations  are  carried  on,  the  logs,  in  floating 
down,  often  get  jammed  up  here  and  there,  and  it  becomes 
necessary  to  find  the  timber  which  is  a  kind  of  keystone 
and  stops  all  the  rest.  Once  detach  this,  and  away  dash 
the  giant  trunks,  thundering  headlong,  helter-skelter,  down 
the  rapids.  It  is  just  this  office  which  he  who  defines  his 
terms  accurately  performs  for  the  dead-locked  questions 
of  the  day.  Half  the  controversies  of  the  world  are  dis- 
putes about  words.  How  often  do  we  see  two  persons 
engage  in  what  Cowper  calls  "  a  duel  in  the  form  of  a 
debate," — tilting  furiously  at  each  other  for  hours, — 
slashing  with  syllogisms,  stabbing  with  enthymemes,  hook- 
ing with  dilemmas,  and  riddling  with  sorites, —  with  no 
apparent  prospect  of  ever  ending  the  fray,  till  suddenly 
it  occurs  to  one  of  them  to  define  precisely  what  he  means 

257 


258  WOKDS;    TIIEFR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

by  a  term  on  wliich  ilie  discussion  hinges;  when  it  is  found 
that  tlie  combatants  bad  no  cause  for  quarrel,  having 
agi-ecd  in  opinion  from  the  beginning!  The  juggle  of  all 
sopliistry  lies  in  employing  etjuivocal  expressions, —  that 
is,  such  as  may  be  taken  in  two  different  meanings,  using 
a  word  in  one  sense  in  the  premises,  and  in  another  sense 
in  the  conclusion.  Frequently  the  word  on  which  a  con- 
troversy turns  is  unconsciously  made  to  do  double  dut}', 
and  under  a  seeming  unity  there  lurks  a  real  dualism  of 
meaning,  from  which  endless  confusions  arise.  Accurately 
to  define  such  a  term  is  to  provide  one's  self  with  a  master- 
key  which  unlocks  the  whole  dispute. 

Who  is  not  familiar  with  the  fierce  contests  of  the 
Nominalists  and  Realists,  which  raged  so  long  in  the  Mid- 
dle Ages?  Though  turning  upon  refinements  of  abstrac- 
tion so  subtle  that  one  would  think  the}'  never  could  stir 
in  the  human  bosom  the  faintest  breath  of  passion,  the 
dispute  roused  the  combatants  on  both  sides  to  the  most 
frenzied  fury.  Beginning  with  words,  these  two  meta- 
physical sects  came  at  last  to  blows,  and  not  only  shed 
blood,  but  even  sacrificed  lives  for  the  question,  whether 
an  abstract  name  (as  man,  for  example)  represented  any 
one  man  in  particular,  or  man  in  general.  Yet,  properly 
understood,  they  maintained  only  opposite  poles  of  the 
same  truth;  and  were,  therefore,  both  right,  and  both 
wrong.  The  Nominalists,  it  has  been  said,  only  denied 
what  no  one  in  his  senses  would  afiirm,  and  the  Realists 
only  contended  for  what  no  one  in  his  senses  would  deny; 
a  hair's  breadth  parted  those  who,  had  they  understood 
each  other's  language,  would  have  had  no  altercation. 
Again,  who  can  tell  how  far  the  clash  of  opinions  among 
political  economists  has  been  owing  to  the  use  in  opposite 


THE    FALLACIES    IN    WORDS.  259 

senses  of  a  very  few  words;?  Had  Smith,  Say,  Ricardo, 
Malthus,  irCullocli,  Mill,  begun  framing  their  systems  by 
defining  carefully  the  meanings  attached  by  them  to  cer- 
tain terms  used  on  every  page  of  their  writings, —  such 
as  Wealth,  Labor,  Capital,  Value,  Supply  and  Demand, 
Over-trading, —  it  may  be  doubted  whether  they  would 
not,  to  some  extent,  have  harmonized  in  opinion,  instead 
of  giving  us  theories  as  opposite  as  the  poles. 

How  many  fallacies  have  grown  out  of  the  ambiguity 
of  the  word  "money,"  which,  instead  of  being  a  simple 
and  indivisible  term,  has  at  least  half-a-dozen  different 
meanings!  Money  may  be  either  specie,  bank-notes,  or 
both  together,  or  credit,  or  capital,  or  capital  offered  for 
foan.  A  merchant  is  said  to  fail  "  for  lack  of  money," 
when,  in  fact,  he  fails  because  he  lacks  credit,  capital,  or 
merchandise,  money  having  no  more  to  do  with  the  mat- 
ter than  the  carts  or  railway  wagons  by  which  the  mer- 
chandise is  transported.  Again:  money  is  spoken  of  as 
yielding  "interest,"  which  it  cannot  do,  since  wherever  it 
is,  whether  in  a  bank,  in  one's  pocket,  or  in  a  safe,  it  is 
dead  capital.  The  confusion  of  the  terms  "  wealth "  and 
"money"  gave  birth  to  "the  mercantile  system,"  one  of 
the  greatest  curses  that  ever  befell  Europe.  As  in  popular 
language  to  grow  rich  is  to  accumulate  "  money,"  and  to 
grow  poor  is  to  lose  "  money,"  this  term  became  a  synonym 
for  "wealth";  and,  till  recently  at  least,  all  the  nations 
of  Europe  studied  every  means  of  accumulating  gold  and 
silver  in  their  respective  countries.  To  accomplish  this 
they  prohibited  the  exportation  of  money,  gave  bounties 
on  the  importation,  and  restricted  the  importation  of 
other  commodities,  expecting  thus  to  produce  a  "  favor- 
able balance  of  trade," — a  conduct  as  wise   as  that  of  a 


2G0  words;  theik  use  and  abuse. 

shop-keeper  who  should  sell  his  goods  only  for  money,  and 
hoard  every  dollar,  instead  of  replacing  and  increasing  his 
stock,  or  putting  his  surplus  capital  at  interest.  France, 
under  Colbert,  acted  upon  this  principle,  and  Voltaire 
extolled  his  wisdom  in  thus  preferring  the  accumulation 
of  imperishable  bullion  to  the  exchange  of  it  for  articles 
which  must,  sooner  or  later,  ivear  out.  The  effect  of  this 
fallacy  has  been  to  make  the  nations  regard  the  wealth 
of  their  customers  as  a  source  of  loss  instead  of  profit, 
and  an  advantageous  market  as  a  curse  instead  of  a  bless- 
ing, by  which  errors  the  improvement  of  Europe  has  been 
more  retarded  than  by  all  other  causes  put  together. 

So  with  the  mortal  theological  wars  in  which  so  much 
ink  has  been  shed.  Who  has  not  read  of  the  disputes 
between  the  Arians  and  Semi-Arians  and  their  enemies, 
when  orthodoxy  became  so  nice  that  a  slip  in  a  single 
expression,  the  use  or  omission  of  a  single  word,  sufficed 
to  make  a  man  a  heretic, —  when  eveiy  heresy  produced  a 
new  creed,  and  every  creed  a  new  heresy?  The  shelves 
of  our  public  libraries  groan  under  the  weight  of  huge 
folios  and  quartos  once  hurled  at  each  other  by  the  giants 
of  divinity,  which  never  would  have  been  published  but 
for  their  confused  notions,  or  failure  to  discriminate  the 
meaning,  of  certain  technical  and  oft-recurring  terms. 
Beginning  with  discordant  ideas  of  what  is  meant  b)'  the 
words  Will,  Necessity,  Unity,  Law,  Person, —  terms  vital  in 
theology, —  the  more  they  argued,  the  farther  they  were 
apart,  and  while  fancying  the}"^  were  battling  with  real 
adversaries,  were,  Quixote-like,  tilting  at  windmills,  or 
fighting  with  shadows,  till  at  last  utter 

"Confusion  umpire  sat. 
And  by  deciding  worse  embroiled  the  fray," 


THE   FALLACIES   IX    WORDS.  201 

The  whole  vast  science  of  casuisti'y,  which  once  occuiiicJ 
the  brains  and  tongues  of  the  Schoolmen,  turned  upon 
nice,  hair-splitting  verbal  distinctions,  as  ridiculous  as  the 
disputes  of  the  orthodox  Liliputians  and  the  heretical 
Blefuscudians  about  the  big  ends  and  the  little  ends  of 
the  eggs.  The  readers  of  Pascal  will  remember  the  fierce 
wars  in  the  Sorbonne  between  the  Jesuits  and  the  Jansen- 
ists,  touching  the  doctrine  of  "  efficacious  "  and  "  sufficient " 
grace.  The  question  was,  "  Whether  all  men  received 
from  God  sufficient  grace  for  their  conversion."  The 
Jesuits  maintained  the  affirmative;  the  Jansenists  insisted 
that  this  sufficient  grace  would  never  be  efficacious,  unless 
accompanied  by  special  grace.  "  Then  the  sufficient  grace, 
which  is  not  efficacious,  is  a  contradiction  in  terms,"  cried 
the  Jesuits;  "and,  besides,  it  is  a  heresy!"  We  need  not 
trace  the  history  of  the  logomachy  that  followed,  which 
Pascal  has  immortalized  in  his  "Provincial  Lettei'S," — 
letters  which  De  Maistre  denounces  as  "  Les  Menteurs," 
but  which  the  Jesuits  found  to  be  both  "sufficient"  and 
"efficacious"  for  their  utter  discomfiture.  The  theo- 
logical student  will  recall  the  microscopic  distinctions; 
the  fine-spun  attenuations;  the  spider-like  threads  of 
meaning;  the  delicate,  infinitesimal  verbal  shavings  of 
the  grave  and  angelic  doctors;  how  one  subtle  disputant, 
with  syllabical  penetration,  would  discover  a  heresy  in 
his  opponent's  monosyllables,  while  the  other  would  detect 
a  schism  in  his  antagonist's  conjunctions,  till  finally,  after 
having  filled  volumes  enough  with  the  controversy  to 
form  a  library,  the  microscopic  point  at  issue,  which  had 
long  been  invisible,  was  whittled  down  to  nothing. 

A  controversy  not  less  memorable  was  that  which  raged 
in  the  church  in  the  third  and  fourth  centuries  between 


2G3  words;   their  use  and  abuse. 

the  "  Homoousians"  and  the  "  Homoiusians"  concerning 
the  nature  of  Christ.  The  former  maintained  that  Christ 
was  of  the  same  essence  with  the  Father;  the  latter  that 
he  was  of  like  essence, —  a  dispute  which  Boileau  has 
satirized  in  these  witty  lines: 

"D'unc  syllabe  iinpie  un  saint  mot  augment^ 
Remplit  tons  les  esprits  d'aigreurs  si  meurtricrcs  — 
Tu  fls,  dans  une  guerre  et  si  triste  et  si  longue, 
Pcrir  tant  de  Chretiens,  martyrs  d'uni  diphthongue!'''' 

The  determination  of  the  controversy  depended  on  the 
retention  or  rejection  of  the  diphthong  oi,  or  rather  upon 
the  change  of  the  letter  o  into  i;  and  hence  it  has  been 
asserted  that  for  centuries  Christians  fought  like  tigers, 
and  tore  each  other  to  pieces,  on  account  of  a  single  letter. 
It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  the  dispute,  though  it 
related  to  a  mystery  above  human  comprehension,  was 
something  more  than  a  verbal  one;  and  though  it  is  easy 
to  ridicule  "  microscopic  theology,"  yet  it  is  evident  that 
if  error  employs  it,  truth  must  do  the  same,  even  if  the 
distinction  be  as  small  as  the  difference  between  two 
animalcules  fighting  each  other  among  a  billion  of  fellows 
in  a  drop  of  water. 

Another  famous  theological  controversy  was  that  con- 
cerning the  doctrine  of  the  Double  Procession,  which, 
though  mainly  a  verbal  dispute,  tore  asunder  the  Eastern 
and  Western  Churches,  gave  the  chief  occasion  for  the 
anathemas  of  the  Athanasian  creed,  precipitated  the  fall  of 
the  Empire  of  Constantinople,  and,  it  has  been  asserted, 
sowed  the  original  seed  of  the  present  perplexing  Eastern 
Question. 

To  how  many  discussions  has  that  ambiguous  phrase, 
"the  Church,"  given  rise!    It  has  been  shown  that  in  all 


THE    FALLACIES    IX    WORDS.  2G3 

countries  where  there  is  a  religious  establishment  sup- 
ported by  law,  this  phrase  may  have  six  different  meanings. 
A  Romanist  understands  by  "the  Church  "  his  own  com- 
munion, with  the  hierarchy  and  papal  head;  a  Protestant 
includes  within  "the  Church"  all  sincere  and  devout 
Christians  of  every  denomination.  A  Romanist,  again, 
understands  "priest"  to  refer  to  a  sacrificial  priesthood;  a 
Presbyterian  regards  it  as  derived  from  "  presbyter,"  and 
to  mean  simply  "  elder." 

Disraeli  remarks,  in  his  "  Curiosities  of  Literature,"  that 
there  have  been  few  councils  or  synods  where  the  addition 
or  omission  of  a  word  or  a  phrase  might  not  have  termi- 
nated an  interminable  logomachy.  "  At  the  Council  of 
Basle,  for  the  convenience  of  the  disputants,  John  de 
Secubia  drew  up  a  treatise  of  undeclined  loorcls,  chiefly  to 
determine  the  significations  of  the  particles  from,  by,  hut, 
and  except,  which,  it  seems,  were  perpetually  occasioning 
fresh  disputes  among  the  Hussites  and  Bohemians.  .  .  In 
modern  times  the  popes  have  more  skilfully  freed  the 
church  from  the  'confusion  of  words.'  His  holiness  on  one 
occasion,  standing  in  equal  terror  of  the  Court  of  France, 
who  protected  the  Jesuits,  and  of  the  Court  of  Spain,  who 
maintained  the  cause  of  tlie  Dominicans,  contrived  a  phrase, 
where  a  comma  or  a  full  stop,  placed  at  the  beginning  or 
the  end,  purported  that  his  holiness  tolerated  the  opinions 
which  he  condemned;  and  w'hen  the  rival  parties  dis- 
patched deputations  to  the  Court  of  Rome  to  plead  for  the 
period,  or  advocate  the  comma,  his  holiness,  in  this  'confu- 
sion of  words,'  Hung  an  unpunctuated  copy  to  the  parties; 
nor  was  it  his  fault,  but  that  of  the  spirit  of  party,  if  the 
rage  of  the  one  could  not  subside  into  a  comma,  nor  that 
of  the  other  close  by  a  full  period ! " 


•264  words;   their  l'se  and  abuse. 

It  has  been  truly  said  by  a  Scotch  divine  that  the  vehe- 
mence of  theological  controversy  has  been  generally  pro- 
portional to  the  emptiness  of  the  party  phrases  used.  It  is 
probable  that  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  accurate  definitions 
of  the  chief  terms  in  dispute  would  have  made  the  most 
celebrated  conti'oversies  impossible.  It  is  stated  by  the 
biographer  of  Dr.  Chalmers  that  that  eminent  divine  and 
Dr.  Stuart  met  one  day  in  Edinburgh,  and  engaged  in  a 
long  and  eager  conversation  on  sav'uig  (jrace.  Street  after 
street  was  paced,  and  argument  after  argument  was  vigor- 
ously plied.  At  last,  his  time  or  his  patience  exhausted, 
Chalmers  broke  off  the  interview;  but,  as  at  parting  he 
shook  his  opponent  by  the  hand,  he  said:  "If  you  wish  to 
see  my  views  stated  clearly  and  distinctly,  read  a  tract 
called  '  Hindrances  to  Believing  the  Gospel.''  "  "  Why,"  ex- 
claimed Stuart,  "  that's  the  very  tract  I  published  myself  !  " 

As  in  theology,  so  in  philosoph}^  words  used  without 
precision  have  been  at  the  bottom  of  nearly  all  controver- 
sies. How  often  such  terms  as  Nature,  Necessity,  Freedom, 
Law,  Body,  Matter,  Substance,  Revelation,  Inspiration, 
Knowledge,  Belief,  Finite,  and  Infinite,  are  tossed  about  in 
the  wars  of  words,  as  if  everybody  knew  their  meaning, 
and  as  if  all  the  disputants  used  them  in  exactl}'^  the  same 
sense !  Max  Milller  sensibly  observes  that  people  will  fight 
and  call  each  other  very  hard  names  for  denying  or  assert- 
ing certain  opinions  about  the  Supernatural,  who  would 
consider  it  impertinent  if  they  were  asked  to  define  what 
they  mean  by  the  Supernatural,  and  who  have  never  even 
clearly  perceived  the  meaning  of  Nature.  The  same  writer 
shows  that  the  words  "  to  know  "  and  "  to  believe,"  the 
meanings  of  which  seem  so  obvious,  are  each  used,  in 
modern   languages,    in    three    distinct   senses.      When    we 


THE    FALLACIES    IX    WORDS.  205 

Speak  of  our  belief  in  God,  or  in  the  immortality  of  the 
soul,  we  want  to  express  "a  certainty  independent  of  sense, 
evidence  and  reason,  yet  more  convincing  than  either.  But 
when  we  say  that  we  believe  Our  Lord  suffered  under  Pon- 
tius Pilate,  or  lived  during  the  reign  of  Augustus,  we  do 
not  mean  to  say  that  we  believe  this  with  the  same  belief 
as  the  existence  of  God,  or  the  immortality  of  the  soul. 
Our  assent,  in  this  case,  is  based  on  historical  evidence, 
which  is  only  a  subdivision  of  sense  evidence,  supplemented 
by  the  evidence  of  reason.  When,  thirdly,  we  say,  "  I  be- 
lieve it  is  going  to  rain,"  "  I  believe  "  means  no  more  than 
"  I  guess."  The  same  word,  therefore,  "  conveys  the  high- 
est as  well  as  the  lowest  degree  of  certainty  that  can  be 
predicated  of  the  various  experiences  of  the  human  mind, 
and  the  confusion  produced  by  its  promiscuous  employment 
has  caused  some  of  the  most  violent  controversies  in  mat- 
ters of  religion  and  philosophy."  * 

The  art  of  treaty-making  appears  once  to  have  con- 
sisted in  a  kind  of  verbal  sleight-of-hand;  and  the  most 
dexterous  diplomatist  was  he  who  had  always  "  an  arriere 
pens^e,  which  might  fasten  or  loosen  the  ambiguous  ex- 
pression he  had  so  cautiously  and  so  finely  inlaid  in  the 
mosaic  of  treachery."  When  the  American  colonies  re- 
fused to  be  taxed  by  Great  Britain,  on  the  ground  that 
they  were  not  represented  in  the  House  of  Commons,  a 
new  term,  ''''virtual  representation,"  was  invented  to  silence 
their  clamors.  The  sophism  was  an  ingenious  one;  but  it 
cost  the  mother  country  a  hundred  millions  sterling,  forty 
thousand  lives,  and  the  most  valuable  of  her  colonial 
possessions. 

Hume's   famous   argument    against    miracles    is    based 

*  "  LecturcB  on  the  Science  of  Language,"  Second  Series,  pp.  59*^-6. 


266  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

entirely  upon  a  jX'^/^/o  principil,  or  begging  of  the  ques- 
tion, artfully  concealed  in  an  ambiguous  use  of  the  word 
"  experience."  In  all  our  experience,  he  argues,  we  have 
never  known  the  laws  of  nature  to  be  violated;  on  the 
other  hand,  we  have  had  experience,  again  and  again,  of 
the  falsity  of  testimony;  consequently  we  ought  to  believe 
that  any  amount  of  testimony  is  false  rather  than  admit 
the  occurrence  of  a  miracle.  But  whose  experience  does 
Hume  mean?  Does  he  mean  the  experience  of  all 
the  men  that  ever  lived?  If  so,  he  palpably  begs  the 
very  question  in  dispute.  Does  he  mean  that  a  miracle 
is  contrary  to  the  experience  of  each  individual  who  has 
never  seen  one?  This  would  lead  to  the  absurdest  con- 
sequences. Not  only  was  the  King  of  Bantam  justified 
in  listening  to  no  evidence  for  the  existence  of  ice,  but  no 
man  would  be  authorized,  on  this  principle,  to  expect  his 
own  death.  His  experience  informs  him  directly,  only  that 
others  have  died;  and,  as  he  has  invariably  recovered  when 
attacked  by  disease  himself,  why,  judging  by  his  experi- 
ence, should  he  expect  any  future  sickness  to  be  mortal  ? 
If,  again,  Hume  means  only  that  a  miracle  is  contrary  to 
the  experience  of  men  generally,  as  to  what  is  common  and 
of  ordinary  occurrence,  the  maxim  will  only  amount  to  this, 
that  false  testimony  is  a  thing  of  common  occurrence,  and 
that  miracles  are  not.  This  is  true  enough;  but  "too 
general  to  authorize  of  itself  a  conclusion  in  any  particular 
case.  In  any  other  individual  question  as  to  the  admissi- 
bility of  evidence,  it  would  be  reckoned  absurd  to  consider 
merely  the  average  chances  for  the  truth  of  testimon}'  in 
the  abstract,  w'ithout  inquiring  what  the  testimony  is,  in 
the  particular  instance  before  us.  As  if,  e.g.,  any  one 
had  maintained  that  no  testimony  could  establish  Colum- 


THE    FALLACIES    IX    WORDS.  267 

bus's  account  of  the  discovery  of  America,  because  it  is 
more  common  for  travellers  to  lie  than  for  new  continents 
to  be  discovered."  * 

Again,  the  terms  "  experience  "  and  "  contrary  to  expe- 
rience," imply  a  contradiction  fatal  to  the  whole  argument. 
It  is  clear  that  a  revelation  cannot  be  founded,  as  regards 
the  external  proof  of  its  reality,  upon  anything  else  than 
miracles;  and  these  events  must  be,  in  a  sense,  contrary  to 
nature,  as  known  to  us,  by  the  very  definition  of  the  word. 
If  they  entered  into  the  ordinary  operations  of  nature, — 
that  is,  were  subjects  of  experience, —  they  would  no  longer 
be  miracles. 

In  the  very  phrase  "  a  violation  of  nature,"  so  cun- 
ningly used  by  sceptics,  there  lurks  a  sophism.  The 
expression  seems  to  imply  that  there  are  effects  that  have 
no  cause;  or,  at  least,  effects  whose  cause  is  foreign  to  the 
universe.  But  if  miracles  disturb  or  interrupt  the  estab- 
lished order  of  things,  they  do  so  only  in  the  same  way 
that  the  will  of  man  continually  breaks  in  upon  the  order 
of  nature.  There  is  not  a  day,  an  hour,  or  a  minute,  in 
which  man,  in  his  contact  with  the  material  world,  does 
not  divert  its  course,  or  give  a  new  direction  to  its  order. 
The  order  of  nature  allows  an  apple-tree  to  produce  fruit; 
but  man  can  girdle  the  tree,  and  prevent  it  from  bearing 
apples.  The  order  of  nature  allows  a  bird  to  wing  its 
flight  from  tree  to  tree;  but  the  sportsman's  rifle  brings 
the  bird  to  the  dust.  Yet,  in  spite  of  this,  it  is  asserted 
that  the  smallest  conceivable  intervention,  disturbing  tlie 
fated  order  of  nature,  linked  as  are  its  parts  indissolubly 
from  eternity  in  one  chain,  must  break  up  tlie  entire  sys- 
tem of  the  universe!     "If  only  the  free  will   of   man  be 

*Whutcly's  Logic. 


368  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

acknowledged,  then"  as  an  able  writer  says,  "this  entire 
sophism  comes  down  in  worthless  fragments.  So  long  as 
we  allow  ourselves  to  speak  as  theists,  then  miracles  which 
we  attribute  to  the  will,  the  purpose,  the  jwuer  of  God, 
are  not  in  any  sense  violations  of  nature;  or  they  are  so 
in  the  same  sense  in  which  the  entireness  of  our  human 
existence, —  our  active  converse  with  the  material  v/orld 
from  morning  to  night  of  every  day, —  is  also  a  violation 
of  nature."  The  truth  is,  however,  that  miracles  are  not 
properly  violations  of  the  laws  of  nature,  but  suspensions 
of  them,  or  rather  intercalations  of  higher  and  immedi- 
ate operations  of  God's  power,  in  place  of  the  ordinary 
development  of  those  laws.  An  eminent  scientist  finds  a 
rough  illustration  of  this  in  the  famous  Strasburg  clock. 
He  stood  one  day,  and  watched  it  steadily  marking  the 
seconds,  minutes,  hours,  days  of  the  week,  and  phases  of 
the  moon,  when  suddenly  the  figure  of  an  angel  turned 
up  his  hour-glass,  another  struck  four  times,  and  Death 
struck  twelve  times  with  metal  marrow-bones  to  indicate 
noon;  various  figures  passed  in  and  out  of  the  doorways; 
the  twelve  Apostles  marched,  one  by  one,  before  the  figure 
of  their  Master,  and  a  brass  cock  three  times  flapped  its 
wings,  threw  back  its  head,  and  crowed.  "  All  this,"  says 
the  scientist,  "was  as  much  a  part  of  the  designer's  plan 
as  the  ordinary  marking  of  time,  and  he  had  provided 
for  it  in  advance,  and  the  machinery  for  its  execution  was 
so  arranged  as  to  come  into  play  at  a  definite  moment.  So 
God  may  have  prepared  the  universe  from  the  beginning 
with  a  view  to  miracles,  may  have  ordered  its  laws  in  such 
a  manner  that  at  the  predetermined  hour  in  His  providence 
these  wonderful  phenomena  should  appear,  and  bear  con- 
vincing testimony  to  His  own  power  and  greatness." 


FALLACIES    IN    WORDS.  209 

A  further  and  not  less  fatal  objection  to  Hume's  argu- 
ment is  that  it  confounds  the  distinction  between  testimony 
and  authorit}',  between  the  veracity  of  a  witness  and  his 
competency.  The  miraculous  character  of  an  event  is  not 
a  jnatter  of  intuition  or  observation,  but  of  inference,  and 
cannot  be  decided  by  testimony,  but  only  by  reasoning  from 
the  iH'obabilities  of  the  case.  The  testimony  relates  only 
to  the  happening  of  the  event;  the  question  concerning  the 
nature  of  this  event,  whether  it  is,  or  is  not,  a  violation  of 
physical  law,  can  only  be  determined  by  the  judgment, 
after  weighing  all  the  circumstances  of  the  case.  No  event 
whatever,  viewed  simply  as  an  event,  as  an  external  phe- 
nomenon, can  be  so  marvellous  that  sufficient  tesliinon\' 
will  not  convince  us  that  it  has  really  occurred.  A  thou- 
sand years  ago  the  conversion  of  five  loaves  of  bread  into  as 
many  hundred,  or  the  raising  of  a  dead  man  to  life,  would 
not  have  appeared  more  incredible  than  the  transmission  of 
a  wi'itten  message  five  thousand  miles,  without  error, 
within  a  minute  of  time,  or  from  Europe  to  America,  under 
the  waters  of  the  Atlantic;  yet  these  feats,  miraculous  as 
they  would  once  have  seemed,  have  been  accomplished  by 
the  electric  telegraph.  Hume's  argument  against  miracles, 
therefore,  which  is  based  entirely  upon  an  appeal  to  experi- 
ence and  testimony,  without  reference  to  the  competency  of 
the  conclusion  that  the  events  testified  to  were  supernat- 
ural, is  altogether  inapplicable, 

Hume's  argument  reminds  us  of  the  fallacies  that  lurk 
in  the  word  "Nature,"  and  the  phrase  "Law^of  Nature."' 
Etymologically, "  Nature  "  means  she  who  gives  birth,  or  who 
brings  forth.  But  what  is  she  ?  Is  she  an  independent 
power,  a  being  endowed  with  intelligence  and  will?  Or  is  it 
not  evidently  a  mere  figure  of  speech,  when  we  personify 


270  words;  their  use  asd  abuse. 

Nature,  and  speak  of  her  works  and  her  laws?  "  Tt  is  easy," 
says  Cuvier,  "to  see  the  puerility  of  those  philosophers 
who  have  conferred  on  Nature  a  kind  of  individual  exist- 
ence, distinct  from  the  Creator,  from  the  laws  which  He  has 
imposed  on  the  movement,  and  from  the  properties  and 
forms  which  He  has  given  to  His  creatures;  and  who  rep- 
resent Nature  as  acting  on  matter  by  means  of  her  own 
power  and  reason."  Again,  the  phrase  "Law  of  Natui-e" 
is  sometimes  used  as  if  it  were  equivalent  to  efficient  cause. 
There  are  persons  who  attempt  to  account  for  the  phenom- 
ena of  the  universe  by  the  mere  agency  of  physical  laws, 
when  there  is  no  such  agency,  except  as  a  figure  of  speech. 
A  "Law  of  Nature"  is  only  a  general  statement  concern- 
ing a  large  number  of  similar  individual  facts,  which  it 
describes,  but  in  no  way  accounts  for,  or  explains.  It  is  not 
the  Law  of  Gravitation  which  causes  a  stone  thrown  into 
the  air  to  fall  to  the  earth;  but  the  fact  that  the  stone  so 
falls  is  classed  with  many  other  facts,  which  are  compre- 
hended under  the  general  statement  called  the  "  Law  of 
Gravitation."  "  Second  causes,"  as  physical  laws  are  some- 
times called,  "are  no  causes  at  all;  they  are  mere  fictions 
of  the  intellect,  and  exist  only  in  thought.  A  cause, 
in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word,  that  is,  an  efficient  cause, 
as  original  and  direct  in  its  action,  must  be  a  ^rst  cause; 
that  through  which  its  action  is  transmitted  is  not  a  cause, 
but  a  portion  of  the  cj'ect, —  as  it  does  not  act,  but  is  acted 
upon."  * 

The  changes  of  meaning  which  words  undergo  in  the 
lapse  of  time,  and  the  different  senses  in  which  the  same 
word  is  used  in  different  countries,  are  a  fruitful  source  of 
misunderstanding    and   error.     Hence    in    reading   an  old 

♦  Bowen's  "Logic,"  p.  433. 


FALLACIES    IX    WORDS.  271 

author  it  is  necessary  to  be  constantly  on  our  guard  lest 
our  interpretations  of  his  words  involve  a  gross  anachron- 
ism, because  his  "pure  ideas"  have  become  our  "mixed 
modes."  The  titles  of  "tyrant,"  "sophist,"  "  pai-asite," 
were  originally  honorable  distinctions;  and  to  attach  to 
them  their  modern  significations  would  give  us  wholly  false 
ideas  of  ancient  history.  When  IJishop  Watson,  in  defend- 
ing Christianity  and  the  Bible  from  the  attacks  of  Gibbon 
and  Thomas  Paine,  entitled  his  books  "  An  Apology  for 
Christianity,"  and  "  An  Apology  for  the  Bible,'"  he  used  the 
word  "  apology "  in  its  primitive  sense  of  "  a  defence,"  as 
Plato  had  used  it  in  his  "  Apologia  Soci'atis,"  and  Quad- 
ratus  in  his  "  Apology  for  Christianity  "  to  the  Emperor 
Adrian;  but  the  author  was  probably  understood  by  many 
of  his  readers  to  be  offering  an  excuse  for  the  Christian  sys- 
tem and  for  the  faults  of  the  Scriptures,  instead  of  a  vindi- 
cation of  their  truth.  "Apology  for  the  Bible!  "  exclaimed 
George  the  Third,  .on  hearing  of  the  book;  "the  Bible 
needs  no  apology."  When  we  find  an  old  English  writer 
characterizing  his  opponent's  argument  as  "impertinent," 
we  are  apt  to  attach  to  the  word  the  idea  of  insolence  or 
rudeness;  whereas  the  meaning  is  simply  "  not  pertinent"  to 
the  question.  So  a  magistrate  who  "  '  indifferently  '  admin- 
istered justice"  meant  formerly  a  magistrate  who  admin- 
istered justice  "  impartially." 

Were  we  to  use  the  word  "  gravitation  "  in  translating 
certain  passages  of  ancient  authors,  we  should  assert  that 
the  great  discovery  of  Newton  had  been  anticipated  by  hun- 
dreds of  years,  though  we  know  that  these  authors  had 
never  dreamed  of  the  law  which  that  word  recalls  to  our 
minds.  Most  of  the  terminology  of  the  Christian  church 
is  made  up  of  words  that  once  had  a  more  general  mean- 


272  woKDs;  THEIR  use  and  abuse. 

ing.  "Bishop"  meant  original]}'  overseer;  "priest,"  or 
"presbyter,"  meant  elder;  "deacon"  meant  adminis- 
trator; and  "sacrament,"  a  vow  of  allegiance.  In  read- 
ing the  passage  in  the  Athanasian  Creed  where  the  per- 
sons of  the  Trinity  are  spoken  of  as  the  Father  "  incom- 
prehensible," the  Son  "  incomprehensible,"  and  the  Holy 
Ghost  "incomprehensible,"  almost  all  persons  suppose  the 
word  "incomprehensible"  to  mean  "inconceivable,"  or 
beyond  or  above  the  human  understanding.  But  when 
the  Creed  was  translated  into  English  from  the  Latin, 
the  word  meant  simply  "  not  comprehended  within  any 
limits,"  and  corresponded  to  the  term  "  immense,"  used  in 
the  original.  In  studying  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics, 
we  shall  be  continually  led  into  error,  unless  we  note  the 
diflference  between  the  meanings  attached  in  them  to  cer- 
tain terms,  and  those  we  now  attach  to  corresponding 
terms.  Thus  the  "  God "  denoted  by  the  Greek  and 
Latin  words  which  we  so  translate,  was  not  the  eternal 
Maker  and  Governor  of  the  Universe,  whom  Christians 
worship,  but  a  being  such  as  our  Pagan  forefathers  wor- 
shipped. In  reading  the  histor}^  of  France,  an  American 
or  Englishman  is  constantly  in  danger  of  misapprehension 
by  associating  with  certain  words  common  to  the  French 
and  English  languages  similar  ideas.  When  he  reads  of 
Parliaments  or  the  Noblesse,  he  is  apt  to  suppose  that  they 
resembled  the  Parliaments  and  Nobility  of  England,  when 
their  constitution  was  altogether  different.  To  confound 
them  is  like  confounding  a  Jacobin  and  a  Jacobite,  a 
French  vicaire  with  an  English  vicar,  or  a  French  gourer- 
)i(ntte  with  an  Englisli  governess.  The  list  is  almost  end- 
less of  words,  which,  derived  from    the    same  Latin  term, 


FALLACIES    IN    WORDS.  273 

connote  one  class  of  ideas  in  French  and  another  in 
English. 

Mr.  J.  S.  Mill  observes  that  historians,  travellers,  and 
all  who  write  or  speak  concerning  moral  and  social  phe- 
nomena with  which  they  are  unacquainted,  are  apt  to  con- 
found in  their  descriptions  things  wholly  diverse.  Having 
but  a  scanty  vocabulary  of  words  relating  to  such  phenom- 
ena, and  never  having  analyzed  the  facts  to  which  these 
words  correspond  in  their  own  country,  they  apply  them 
to  other  facts  to  which  they  are  more  or  less  inapplicable. 
Thus,  as  I  have  before  briefly  stated,  tlie  first  English 
conquerors  of  Bengal  carried  with  thuni  the  phrase 
''landed  proprietor"  into  a  country  where  tlie  rights 
of  individuals  over  the  soil  were  extremely  different  in 
degree,  and  even  in  nature,  from  those  recognized  in  Eng- 
land. Applying  the  term  with  all  its  English  associations 
in  such  a  state  of  things,  to  one  who  had  only  a  limited 
right  they  gave  an  absolute  right;  from  another,  because 
he  had  not  an-  absolute  right,  they  took  away  all  right; 
drove  whole  classes  of  men  to  ruin  and  despair;  filled 
the  country  with  banditti;  created  a  feeling  that  nothing 
was  secure;  and  produced,  with  the  best  intentions,  a  dis- 
organization which  had  not  been  produced  in  that  country 
by  the  most  ruthless  of  its  barbarian  invaders.* 

How  often,  in  reading  ancient  history,  are  we  misled 
by  the  application  of  modern  terms  to  past  institutions 
and  events!  Guizot,  in  speaking  of  the  towns  of  Europe 
between  the  fifth  and  tenth  centuries,  cautions  his  readers 
against  concluding  that  their  state  was  one  either  of  posi- 
tive servitude  or  of  positive  freedom.  He  observes  that 
when  a  society  and  its  language  jiavo  Insted  a  considerable 

*"  Logic,"  Book  IV.,  (liap.  5. 


274  words;  tiieiu  use  and  abuse. 

time,  its  words  acquire  a  complete,  determinate,  and  pre- 
cise meaning, —  a  kind  of  legal  official  signification.  Time 
has  introduced  into  the  signification  of  every  term  a  thou- 
sand ideas,  which  are  suggested  to  us  every  time  we  hear 
it  pronounced,  but  which,  as  they  do  not  all  bear  the  same 
date,  are  not  all  suitable  at  the  same  time.  Thus  the 
terms  "  servitude "  and  "  freedom "  recall  to  our  minds 
ideas  far  more  precise  and  definite  than  the  facts  of  the 
eighth,  ninth,  or  tenth  centuries,  to  which  they  relate. 
Whether  we  say  that  the  towns  in  the  eighth  century  were 
in  a  state  of  "  freedom  "  or  in  a  state  of  "  servitude,"  we 
say,  in  either  case,  too  much;  for  they  were  a  prey  to  the 
rapacity  of  the  strong,  and  yet  maintained  a  certain  degree 
of  independence  and  importance. 

So,  again,  as  the  same  writer  shows,  the  term  "  civiliza- 
tion "  comprises  more  or  fewer  ideas,  according  to  the 
sense,  popular  or  scientific,  in  which  it  is  used.  "  The 
popular  signification  of  a  word  is  formed  by  degrees,  and 
while  all  the  facts  it  represents  are  present.  As  often  as  a 
fact  comes  before  us  which  seems  to  answer  to  the  signifi- 
cation of  a  known  term,  this  term  is  naturally  applied  to 
it,  and  thus  its  signification  goes  on  broadening  and  deep- 
ening, till,  at  last,  all  the  various  facts  and  ideas  which, 
from  the  natui'e  of  things,  ought  to  be  brought  together 
and  embodied  in  the  term,  are  collected  and  embodied  in  it. 
When,  on  the  contrary,  the  signification  of  a  word  is 
determined  by  science,  it  is  usually  done  by  one  or  a  very 
few  individuals  who.  at  the  time,  are  under  the  influenr-e 
of  some  particular  fact,  which  has  taken  possession  of  their 
imagination.  Thus  it  comes  to  pass  that  scientific  defini- 
tions are,  in  general,  much    narrower,  and,  on  that  very 


FALLACIES    IN    WORDS.  275 

account,  much  less  correct,  than  the  popuhvr  significations 
given  to  words." 

It  is  this  continual  incorporation  of  new  facts  and  ideas, 
—  circumstances  originally  accidental, —  into  the  perma- 
nent significations  of  words,  which  makes  the  dictionary 
definition  of  a  word  so  poor  an  exponent  of  its  real  mean- 
ing. For  a  time  this  definition  suffices;  but  in  the  lapse  of 
time  many  nice  distinctions  and  subtle  shades  of  meaning 
adhere  to  the  word,  which  whoever  attempts  to  use  it  with 
no  other  guide  than  the  dictionary  is  sure  to  confound. 
Hence  the  ludicrous  blunders  made  by  foreigners,  whose 
knowledge  of  a  language  is  gained  only  from  books;  and 
hence  the  reason  why,  in  any  language,  there  are  so  few 
exact  synonyms. 

How  many  persons  who  oppose  compulsory  education, 
have  been  frightened  by  the  word  "  compulsory,"  attaching 
to  it  ideas  of  tyranny  and  degradation !  How  many  per- 
sons are  there  in  every  community,  who,  in  the  language 
of  Milton, 

"Bawl  for  frecrlom  in  thoir  ponselegs  mood,  - 

And  still  revolt  when  the  truth  would  make  them  free;  l_ 

License  they  mean  when  they  cry  liberty. 
For  who  love  that,  must  first  be  wise  and  good." 

Who  can  estimate  the  amount  of  mischief  which  has  been 
done  to  society  by  such  phrases  as  "  Liberty,  Equality,  and 
Fraternity,"  and  other  such  "  rabble-charming  words,"  as 
South  calls  them,  "  which  have  so  much  wildfire  wrapped 
up  in  them"?  How  many  persons  who  declaim  passion- 
ately about  "the  majesty  of  the  people,"  "the  sovereignty 
of  the  people,"  have  ever  formed  for  themselves  any  defin- 
ite conceptions  of  what  they  mean  by  these  expressions  ? 
Locke  has  well  said  of  those  who  have  the  words  "  wis- 
dom," "glory,"  "grace,"  constantly  at  their  tongue's  end, 


27G  words;   their  rsi-:  Axr>  arl'SE. 

that  if  they  should  be  asked  what  they  mean  by  them, 
they  would  be  at  a  stand,  and  know  not  what  to  answer. 
Even  Locke  himself,  who  has  written  so  ably  on  the  abuse 
of  words,  has  used  some  of  the  cardinal  and  vital  terms 
in  his  philosophy  in  different  senses.  La  Harpe  says  that 
the  express  object  of  the  entire  "Essay  on  the  Human 
Understanding"  is  to  demonstrate  rigorously  that  Ventende- 
meiit  est  esprit  et  (Vuite  nature  essoitieUement  distiucte  de 
la  matih'e;  yet  the  author  has  used  the  words  "  reflection," 
"  mind,"  "  spirit,"  so  vaguely  that  he  has  been  accused  of 
holding  doctrines  subversive  of  all  moral  distinctions.  Even 
the  eagle  eye  of  Newton  could  not  penetrate  the  obscur- 
ity of  Locke's  language,  and  on  reading  the  "  Essay  "  he 
took  its  author  for  a  Hobbist.  De  Maistre  declares  the 
title  a  misnomer;  instead  of  being  called  an  "Essay  on 
the  Human  Understanding,"  it  should  be  entitled,  he 
thinks,  an  "  Essay  on  the  Understanding  of  Locke." 

Again,  what  an  amount  of  error  is  wrapped  up  in  what 
have  been  called  the  regulation-labels  of  philosophy;  as, 
for  example,  when  a  writer  is  called  a  "pantheist"  in 
religion,  an  "  intuitionist "  in  ethics,  an  "absolutist"  in 
politics,  etc.,  etc.!  Classifications  of  this  sort,  made,  as 
they  generally  are,  without  judgment,  discrimination,  or 
qualification,  are  the  greatest  foes  of  true  knowledge.  It 
is  probable  that  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  the  jjersons  who 
confidently  label  Mr.  Emerson  as  a  "pantheist"  or  "intu- 
itionist," could  neither  define  these  terms  accurately,  nor 
put  their  fingei'S  upon  the  passages  in  his  writings  which 
are  supposed  to  justify  their  use. 

Professor  Bowen  notices  a  fallacy  in  a  certain  use  of 
the  word  "  tend."  When  there  is  more  than  an  even 
chance  that  a  given    result  will    occur,  we   may  properly 


FALLACIES    IX    WORDS.  277 

say  that  it  "tends"  to  happen;  if  there  is  less  than  an 
even  chance,  it  "tends"  not  to  happen.  Thus,  all  persons 
who  have  attained  the  age  of  twenty-four  survive,  on  an 
averayp,  till  they  are  sixty-two  years  old.  But  no  one 
jjerson,  now  aged  twenty-four,  has  a  right  to  expect  that 
this  average  will  be  exemplified  in  his  particular  case.  All, 
collectively,  "tend"  to  the  average;  but  no  one  "tends" 
to  the  average.  Mr.  Darwin,  in  his  "Origin  of  Species 
by  Natural  Selection,"  bases  his  theory  on  a  fallacy  in 
the  use  of  the  word  "  tend."  "  He  first  argues  that  the 
specific  Marks  of  Species,  both  in  the  animal  and  vegeta- 
ble kingdoms,  'tend'  to  vary,  because,  perhaps  in  one  case 
out  of  ten  thousand,  a  child  is  born  with  six  fingers  on 
one  hand,  or  a  cat  with  blue  eyes,  or  a  flower  grows  out  of 
the  middle  of  another  flower.  Collecting  many  instances  of 
such  sports  of  nature  or  monstrosities,  he  bases  his  whole 
theory  upon  them,  forgetting  that  the  vastly  larger  num- 
ber of  normal  growths  and  developments  proves  that  the 
'tendency'  is  to  non-variation.  Then,  secondly,  because, 
perhaps,  one  out  of  a  hundred  of  these  abnormal  Marks  is 
transmitted  by  inheritance,  he  assumes  that  these  freaks 
of  nature  tend  to  perpetuate  themselves  in  a  distinct  race, 
and  thus  to  become  permanent  Marks  of  distinct  species. 
Thirdly,  as  either  of  the  two  preceding  points,  taken 
singly,  alfords  no  basis  whatever  for  his  doctrine,  he 
assumes  that  their  joint  occurrence  is  probable,  because  he 
has  made  out  what  is,  in  truth,  a  very  faint  probability 
that  each  may  separately  happen.  But  if  the  chance  of  a 
variation  in  the  first  instance  is  only  one  out  of  a  thousand, 
and  that  of  the  anomaly  being  handed  down  by  descent 
is  one  out  of  a  hundred,  the  probability  of  a  variation 
established   by    inheritance    is   but  one   out  of   a  hundred 


278  WORDS,    TIIEIll    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

thousand.  As  the  theory  furtlier  requires  the  aimulation 
of  an  indefinite  number  of  such  variations,  one  upon 
another,  the  formation  of  a  new  species  by  the  Darwinian 
process  may  safely  be  pronounced  to  be  incredible." 

In  treating  of  the  diflPerence  between  "  the  disgraceful " 
and  "  the  indecent,"  Archbishop  Whately  observes  that 
the  Greeks  and  the  Romans,  unfortunately,  had  not,  like 
ourselves,  a  se^jarate  word  for  each;  turpe  and  aiayjiu^ 
served  to  express  both.  Upon  this  ambiguity  some  of 
the  ancient  philosophers,  especially  the  Cynics,  founded 
paradoxes,  by  which  they  bewildered  themselves  and  their 
hearers.  It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  the  Saxon  part  of 
our  language,  containing  a  smaller  percentage  of  synon- 
ymous words  that  are  liable  to  be  confounded,  is  much 
freer  from  equivocation  than  the  Romanic.  Of  four 
hundred  and  fifty  words  discriminated  by  Whately,  in  his 
treatise  on  synonyms,  less  than  ninety  are  Anglo-Saxon. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  has  been  noted  by  the  same  writer 
that  the  double  origin  of  our  language,  from  Saxon  and 
Norman,  often  enables  a  sophist  to  seem  to  render  a  reason, 
when  he  is  only  repeating  the  assertion  in  synonymous 
words  of  a  different  family:  e.g.^  "To  allow  every  man  an 
unbounded  freedom  of  speech  must  be  always,  on  the 
whole,  highly  advantageous  to  the  State;  for  it  is  extremely 
conducive  to  the  interests  of  the  community  that  each 
individual  should  enjoy  a  liberty  perfectly  unlimited  of 
expressing  his  sentiments."  So  the  physician  in  Moliere 
accounted  for  opium  producing  sleep  by  saying  that  it 
had  a  soporific  virtue.  Again,  there  is  a  large  class  of 
words  employed  indiscriminately,  neither  because  they  ex- 
press precisely  the  same  ideas,  nor  because  they  enable  the 
sophist  to  confound  things  that  are  essentially  different, 


FALL.iCIKS    IX    WORDS.  279 

but  because  they  convey  no  distinct  ideas  whatever,  except 
of  the  moral  character  of  him  who  uses  them.  "//  nCup- 
pelle"  says  Paul  Louis  Courier,  speaking  of  an  opponent, 
^^ jacobin,  revolutionnaire,  plagiaire,  voleur,  empoissonneur, 
faussaire,  pestifere  on  pesti/cre.,  enrage,  imposteur,  calom- 
niateur,  UbeUiste,  homme  horrible,  ordiirier,  f/riinacier, 
chiffonnier,  .  .  .  Je  rois  ce  qiCil  vent  dire;  il  entend  que 
lni  et  moi  sonwies  d'avis  different.'''' 

It  is  an  old  trick  of  controversialists,  noticed  in  a  pre- 
vious chapter,  to  employ  "  question- begging ''  words  that 
determine  disputes  summarily  without  facts  or  arguments. 
Thus  political  parties  and  religious  sects  quietly  beg  the 
questions  at  issue  between  them  by  dubbing  themselves 
"the  Democrats  "  and  "  the  Republicans",  or  "the  Ortho- 
dox" and  "the  Liberals";  though  the  orthodoxy  of  the  one 
may  consist  only  in  opposition  to  somebody  else's  doxy,  and 
the  liberality  of  the  other  may  differ  from  bigotry  only  in 
the  fact  that  the  bigots  are  liberal  only  to  o)ie  set  of  opin- 
ions, while  the  Liberals  are  bigoted  against  all.  So  with 
the  argument  of  what  is  called  the  Selfish  School  of  Moral 
Philosophers,  who  deny  that  man  ever  acts  from  purely 
disinterested  motives.  The  whole  superstructui'e  of  their 
degrading  theory  rests  upon  a  confounding  of  the  term 
"self-love"  with  "selfishness."  If  I  go  out  to  walk,  and, 
being  overtaken  by  a  shower,  spread  my  umbrella  to  save 
myself  from  a  wetting,  never  once,  all  the  while,  thinking 
of  my  friends,  my  country,  or  of  anybody,  in  short,  but 
myself,  will  it  be  pretended  that  this  act,  though  performed 
exclusively  for  self,  was  in  any  sense  selfish?  As  well  might 
you  say  that  the  cultivation  of  an  "art"  makes  a  man 
"artful";  that  one  wlio  gets  lus  living  by  any  "craft"  is 
necessarily  "crafty";  that  a  man  skilled  in  "design"  is  a 


S80  WoitDS;    TIIKIII    l-SK    AND    AISLSR 

"  designing  "  man;  oi-  that  a  man  who  forms  a  "  project"  is, 
therefore,  a  "  projector." 

Derivatives  do  not  always  retain  the  force  of  their 
primitives.  Wearing  woolen  clothes  does  not  make  a  man 
sheepish.  A  representative  does  not,  and  sJioiild  not,  always 
represent  the  will  of  his  constituents  (that  is,  in  the 
sense  of  voting  as  they  wish,  or  being  their  mere  spokes- 
nuDi);  for  they  may  clamor  for  measures  opposed  to  the 
Constitution,  which  he  has  sworn  to  support.  Self-love,  in 
the  highest  degree,  implies  no  disregard  of  the  I'ights  of 
others;  whereas  Selfishness  is  always  sacrificing  others  to 
itself, —  it  contains  the  germ  of  every  crime,  and  fires  its 
neighbor's  house  to  roast  its  own  eggs. 

What  towering  structui'es  of  fallacy  conservatives  have 
often  built  upon  the  twofold  meaning  of  the  word  "old"! 
Strictly,  it  denotes  the  leiH/fh  of  time  that  any  object  has 
existed;  but  it  is  often  employed,  instead  of  "ancient,"  to 
denote  distance  of  time.  Because  old  men  are  generally  the 
wisest  and  most  experienced,  opinions  and  practices  handed 
down  to  us  from  the  "  old  times  "  of  ignorance  and  super- 
stition, when  the  world  was  comparatively  in  its  youth,  it  is 
thought  must  be  entitled  to  the  highest  i*espect.  The  truth 
is,  as  Sydney  Smith  says,  "  of  living  men  the  oldest  has, 
ceteris  j^oribus,  the  most  experience;  of  generations,  the 
oldest  has  the  least  experience.  Our  ancestors,  up  to  the 
Conquest,  were  children  in  arms;  chubby  boys  in  the  time 
■of  Edward  the  First;  striplings  under  Elizabeth;  men  in 
the  reign  of  Queen  Anne;  and  we  only  are  the  white- 
bearded,  silver-headed  ancients,  who  have  treasured  up, 
and  are  prepared  to  profit  by,  all  the  experience  which 
human  life  can  supply."  Again,  how  many  tedious  books, 
pamphlets,  and    newspaper  articles   have  been  written    to 


FALLACIES    IN    WORDS.  281 

prove  that  education  should  consist  of  mental  discipline, — 
founded  on  an  erroneous  derivation  of  the  word  from 
educere,  "to  draw  out."  Does  education,  it  is  asked,  con- 
sist in  filling  the  child's  mind  as  a  cistern  is  filled  with 
water  brought  in  buckets  from  some  other  source,  or  in  the 
opening  up  of  its  own  fountains?  The  fact  is,  education 
comes  not  from  educere,  but  from  ediirare,  which  means  "  to 
nourish,"  "  to  foster,"  to  do  just  what  the  nurse  does. 
Edncit  ohstetrix,  says  Cicero,  educat  nutrix,  instituit  pcedu- 
gogus.  It  is  food,  above  all  things,  which  the  growing 
mind  craves;  and  the  mind's  food  is  knowledge.  Disci- 
pline, training,  healthful  development  is,  indeed,  necessary, 
but  it  should  form  a  part  only,  not  usurp  the  lion's  share, 
of  education.  In  an  ideal  system  this  and  the  nourishing 
of  the  mind  by  wholesome  knowledge  would  proceed  simul- 
taneously. The  school  lesson  would  feed  the  mind,  while 
the  thorough,  patient  and  conscientious  acquisition  of  it 
would  gginnaze  the  intellect  and  strengthen  the  moral 
force.  Why  have  one  class  of  studies  for  discipline  onl}^ 
and  another  class  for  nourishment  only,  w^hen  there  ax"e 
studies  which  at  once  fill  the  mind  with  the  materials  of 
thinking,  and  develop  the  power  of  thought, —  which,  at  the 
same  time,  impart  useful  knowledge,  and  afl'ord  an  intellec- 
tual gymnastic?  Is  a  merchant,  whose  business  compels 
him  to  walk  a  dozen  miles  a  day,  to  be  told  that  he  must 
walk  another  dozen  for  the  sake  of  exercise,  and  for  that 
alone?  Yet  not  less  preposterous,  it  seems  to  us,  is  the  rea- 
soning of  a  class  of  educators  who  would  range  on  one  side 
the  practically  useful  and  on  the  other  the  educational,  and 
build  high  between  them  a  partition  wall. 

If   a  man,  by  mastering  Chillingworth,  learns  how  to 
reason  logically  at  the  same  time  that  he  learns  the  princi- 


282  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

pies  of  Protestantism,  must  he  study  logic  in  Whately  or 
Jevens?  One  of  the  disadvantages  of  an  education  of  which 
discipline,  pure  and  simple,  is  made  the  end,  is  that  the 
discipline,  being  disagreeable,  too  often  ends  with  the 
school-days;  whereas  the  discipline  gained  agreeably,  in- 
stead of  being  associated  with  disgust,  would  be  continued 
through  life.  It  is  possible  that  the  muscular  discipline 
which  the  gymnasium  gives  is  greater  while  it  lasts  than 
that  which  is  gained  by  a  blacksmith  or  other  laborer  in 
his  daily  work;  but  whose  muscles  are  more  developed, 
the  man's  who  practises  a  few  months  or  j-ears  in  a  gym- 
nasium, or  the  man's  whose  calling  compels  him  to  use  his 
muscles  all  his  life?  What  would  the  graduate  of  the  gym- 
nasium do,  if  hugged  by  a  London  coal-heaver? 

Again,  the  reader  of  Macaulay's  "History  of  England" 
will  recollect  the  hot  and  long-protracted  debates  in  Parlia- 
ment in  1696,  upon  the  question  whether  James  II  had 
"abdicated"  or  "deserted"  the  crown, —  the  Lords  insist- 
ing upon  the  former,  the  Commons  upon  the  latter,  term. 
He  will  also  recall  the  eloquent  and  fierce  debate  by  the 
Lords  upon  the  motion  that  they  should  subscribe  an 
instrument,  to  which  the  Commons  had  subscribed,  recog- 
nizing William  as  "rightful  and  lawful  king  of  England." 
This  the}'  refused  to  do,  but  voted  to  declare  that  he  had 
the  right  by  law  to  the  English  crown,  and  that  no  other 
person  had  any  right  whatever  to  that  crown.  The  dis- 
tinction between  the  two  propositions,  observes  Macaulay, 
a  Whig  ma}',  without  any  painful  sense  of  shame,  acknowl- 
edge to  be  beyond  the  reach  of  his  faculties,  and  leave  to 
be  discussed  by  high  churchmen.  The  distinction  between 
"abdicate"  and  "desert,"  however,  is  an  important  one, 
obvious   almost   at    a   glance.      Had    Parliament    declared 


FALLACIES    IJT    WORDS.  283 

that  James  had  "deserted"  the  tlirone,  they  would  have 
admitted  that  it  was  not  only  his  right,  Ijut  his  duty,  to 
return,  as  in  the  case  of  a  husband  who  had  deserted  his 
wife,  or  a  soldier  who  had  deserted  his  post.  By  declaring 
that  he  had  "  abdicated  "  the  throne,  they  virtually  asserted 
that  he  had  voluntarily  relinquished  the  crown,  and  for- 
feited all  right  to  it  forever. 

Among  the  ambiguous  words  which  at  this  day  lead  to 
confusion  of  thought,  one  of  the  most  prominent  is  the 
word,  "unity."  There  are  not  a  few  Christians  who  con^ 
found  what  the  Apostles  say  concerning  "  unity  "  of  spirit, 
faith,  etc.,  with  unity  of  church  government,  and  infer, 
because  the  church, —  that  is,  the  church  universal, —  is 
one,  as  having  one  common  Head,  one  Spirit,  one  Father, 
it  must,  therefore",  be  one  as  a  societ;/.  "  Church  unity " 
is  a  good  thing,  so  long  as  it  does  not  involve  the  sacrifice 
of  a  denomination's  life  or  principles;  but  there  are  cases 
where  it  amounts  to  absorption.  It  sometimes  resembles 
too  closely  that  peculiar  union  which  the  boa-constrictor 
is  so  fond  of  consummating  between  itself  and  the  goat. 
It  is  exceedingly  fond  of  goats;  but  when  the  union  is 
complete,  there  is  not  a  trace  of  the  goat, —  it  is  all  boa- 
constrictor. 

Hardly  any  ambiguous  word  has  been  more  fruitful  of 
controversy  than  the  word  "  person,"  as  used  in  the  phrase, 
"the  three  Persons  of  the  Trinity."  If  there  are  three 
Persons,  or  personalities,  in  the  Trinity,  then  there  must 
be,  it  is  argued,  three  Gods.  It  is  true,  the  word  "person" 
implies  a  numerically  distinct  substance;  but  the  theologi- 
cal meaning  is  very  different.  The  word  is  derived  from 
the  Latin  prrsniin,  which  denotes  the  state,  quality,  or 
condition,  wherebv  one  man  differs  from  another,  as  shown 


284  words:  tiieik  use  axd  AiiUSE. 

by  the  phrases  prrs^onam  induere,  i)ersonam  ar/ere,  etc. 
Cicero  .says:  "  Tren  jiersonas  units  austineo;  mcum,  adver- 
sarii,  jtidicis;  I,  being  one,  sustain  three  characters,  my 
own,  that  of  my  client,  and  that  of  the  judge,"  Arch- 
bishop Whately  thinks  it  probable  that  the  Latin  fathers 
meant  by  "person"  to  convey  the  same  idea  as  did  the 
Greek  theologians  by  the  word  "hypostasis," — that  which 
stands  under  (i.e.,  is  the  subject  of)  attributes. 

The  confusion  of  "opposite"  and  "contrary"  is  a  source 
of  not  a  little  fallacious  reasoning  in  ethics  and  in  politics. 
In  every  good  system  of  government  there  are  contriv- 
ances and  adjustments  by  which  a  force  acting  in  one 
direction  may,  at  a  certain  point,  be  met  and  arrested  by 
an  opposite  force.  We  see  this  illustrated  by  the  "gov- 
ernor" of  a  steam  engine,  by  which  the  supply  of  steam 
is  checked  as  the  velocity  is  increased,  and  enlarged  as  the 
velocity  is  diminished.  This  system  of  "checks  and  bal- 
ances," as  it  is  termed,  is  often  sneered  at  by  theoretical 
politicians,  simply  because  they  do  not  discriminate  be- 
tween things  "  opposite  "  and  things  "contraiy."  Things 
"opposite"  complete  each  other,  their  action  producing 
a  common  result  compoundecl  of  the  two;  things  "con- 
trary" antagonize  and  exclude  each  other.  The  most 
"opposite"  mental  or  moral  qualities  may  meet  in  the 
same  person;  but  "contrary"  qualities,  of  course,  cannot. 
The  right  hand  and  the  left  are  "opposites";  but  right 
and  wrong  are  "  contraries."  Sweet  and  sour  are  "  oppo- 
sites"; sweet  and  bitter  are  "contraries."  As  it  has  been 
happily  said,  "opposites"  unfold  themselves  in  different 
directions  from  the  same  root,  as  the  positive  and  nega- 
tive forces  of  electricity,  and  in  their  very  opposition 
uphold   and    sustain  one  another;    while  "contraries"  en- 


FALLACIES    IX    WORDS.  285 

counter  one  another  I'rom  quarters  quite  diverse,  and  one 
subsists  only  in  the  exact  degree  that  it  puts  out  of 
working  the  other. 

Not  a  few  of  our  English  particles  are  equivocal  in 
their  signification,  especially  "and"  and  "or."  The  dual 
meaning  of  the  latter  particle,  which  may  imply  either 
that  two  objects  or  propositions  are  equivalent,  if  not 
identical,  or  that  they  are  unlike,  if  not  contradictory,  is 
a  fruitful  source  of  misunderstanding  and  confusion.  Thu 
conjunction  "and"  is  hardly  less  indefinite  and  equivocal. 
This  is  illustrated  in  the  case  of  Stradlhig  vs.  Stiles,  in 
"  Martinus  Scriblerus,"  familiar  to  the  readers  of  Pope, 
where,  in  a  supposed  will,  a  testator,  possessed  of  six  black 
horses,  six  white  horses,  and  six  pied,  or  black-and-white 
horses,  bequeathed  to  A.  B.  "all  my  black  and  white 
horses."  The  question,  thereupon,  rose  whether  the  be- 
quest carried  the  black  horses,  and  the  white  horses,  or 
the  black-and-white  horses  only.  The  equivocation  could 
have  been  avoided  by  writing  "all  my  black  and  all  my 
white  horses,"  or,  "all  my  pied  horses";  still,  it  is  evident 
that  our  language  needs  a  new  conjunctive. 

Sir  William  Hamilton  points  out  a  defect  in  our  philo- 
sophical language,  in  which  the  terms  "idea,"  "concep- 
tion," "notion,"  are  used  as  almost  convertible  to  denote 
objects  so  different  as  the  images  of  sense  and  the  un- 
picturable  notions  of  intelligence.  The  coiifusiDU  thus 
produced  is  avoided  in  the  German,  "the  richest  in  iiit-ta- 
physical  expressions  of  any  living  tongues,"  in  which  the 
two  kinds  of  objects  are  carefully  distinguished. 

Again,  how  many  systems  of  error  in  metaphysics  and 
ethics  have  been  based  upon  the  etymologies  of  words,  the 
sophist  assuming  .that  the  meaning  of  a  word  must  always 


280'  woiiDs;  THEIR  use  and  abuse. 

be  that  which  it,  or  its  root,  originally  bore!  Thus  Home 
Tooke  tries  to  prove  by  a  wide  induction  that  since  all 
particles, —  that  is,  adverbs,  prepositions,  and  conjunc- 
tions,— were  originally  nouns  and  verbs,  they  must  be  so 
still;  a  species  of  logic  which  would  prove  that  man,  if  the 
Darwinian  theory  be  true,  is  still  a  reptile.  In  a  similar 
way  the  same  writer  has  reached  the  conclusion  that  there 
is  no  eternal  truth,  since  "  truth,"  according  to  its  etymology, 
is  simply  what  one  "  troweth,"  that  is,  what  one  thinks 
or  believes.  This  theory,  it  is  thought,  was  suggested  to 
Tooke  by  a  conjecture  that  "if"  is  equivalent  to  "gif," 
an  imperative  of  the  verb  "to  give";  but  as  it  has  been 
shown,  from  cognate  forms  in  other  languages,  that  this 
particle  has  no  connection  with  the  verb  "  to  give,"  or  any 
other  verb,  any  system  founded  on  this  basis  is  a  mere 
castle  in  the  air.  Truth,  argues  Tooke,  supposes  mankind; 
for  whom,  and  hy  whom  alone  the  word  is  formed,  and  to 
whom  alone  it  is  applicable.  "  If  no  man,  then  no  truth. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  eternal,  immutable,  everlasting 
truth,  unless  mankind,  such  as  they  are  at  present,  be  also 
eternal,  immutable,  and  everlasting.  Two  persons  may 
contradict  each  other,  and  yet  both  speak  truth,  for  the 
truth  of  one  person  may  be  opposite  to  the  truth  of 
another." 

Even  if  we  admit  this  derivation  of  "truth,"  the 
conclusion  does  not  follow;  for  whatever  the  word  once 
meant,  it  now  means  that  which  is  certain,  whether  we 
think  it  or  not.  If  we  are  to  be  governed  wholly  by 
etymology,  we  must  maintain  that  a  "beldam"  is  a  "  fine 
lady,"  that  "priest"  can  mean  only  "advanced  in  years," 
and  that  "Pontifex"  can  only  signify  "a  bridge-builder." 
Ikit  Home  Tooke's  etymology  has  been  disputed  by  the  very 


FALLACIES   IN   "WORDS.  287 

highest  authority.  According  to  Mr.  Garnett,  an  acute 
English  philologist,  "  truth  "  is  derived  "  from  the  Sanscrit 
dhru,  '  to  be  established,' — Jixum  esse;  whence  dhruica, 
'certain,'  i.e.  'established';  German,  traiien,  'to  rely,' 
'trust';  treu,  'faithful,'  'true';  Anglo-Saxon,  treoir- 
treoirth  {fidei^);  English,  'true,'  'truth.'  .To  these  we 
may  add  Gothic,  tr'Kjgons;  Icelandic,  trygge;  {Jidus, 
securus,  tutus):  all  from  the  same  root,  and  all  conveying 
the  same  idea  of  stability  or  security.  '  Truth,'  therefore, 
neither  means  what  is  thought  nor  what  is  said,  but  that 
which  is  permanent.,  stable,  and  is  and  ought  to  be  relied 
upon,  because,  upon  sufficient  data,  it  is  capable  of  being 
demonstrated  or  shown  to  exist.  If  we  admit  this  ex- 
planation, Tooke's  assertions  .  .  .  become  Vox  et  preterea 
nihil. 

Some  years  ago  a  bulky  volume  of  seven  hundred  pages 
octavo  was  written  by  Dr.  Johnson,  a  London  physician, 
to  prove  that  "might  makes  right," — that  justice  is  the 
result,  not  of  divine  instinct,  but  purely  and  simply  of 
arbitrary  decree.  The  foundation  for  this  equally  falla- 
cious and  dangerous  theory  was  the  fact  that  "right"  is 
derived  from  the  Latin,  reiyo,  "  to  rule";  therefore  whatever 
the  rex,  or  "ruler,"  authorizes  or  decrees,  is  right!  As  well 
might  he  argue  that  only  courtiers  can  be  polite,  because 
"  courtesy "  is  borrowed  from  palaces,  or  that  there  can 
be  no  "heaven"  or  "hell"  in  the  scriptural  sense,  because, 
in  its  etymological,  the  one  is  the  canopy  heaved  over  our 
heads,  and  the  other  is  the  hollow  space  beneath  our  feet. 
Indeed,  we  have  seen  an  argument,  founded  on  the  ety- 
mology of  the  latter  word,  to  prove  that  there  is  "  no  hell 
beyond  a  hole  in  the  ground."  In  the  same  way,  because 
our   primitive  vocabulary  is  derived  solely   from  sensible 


288  woKU.s;  TiiKiu  use  and  abuse. 

images,  it  lias  been  assumed  that  the  mind  has  no  ideas 
except  those  derived  through  the  senses,  and  that  thought 
tlierefore  is  onl}'  sensation.  But  neither  idealism  nor 
materialism  can  derive  any  support  from  the  phenomena 
of  language,  for  the  names  we  give  either  to  outward 
objects  or  to  our  conceptions  of  immaterial  entities  can 
give  us  no  conception  of  the  things  themselves.  It  is 
true  that  in  every-day  language  we  talk  of  color,  smell, 
thickness,  shape,  etc.,  not  only  as  sensations  within  us,  but 
as  qualities  inherent  in  the  things  themselves;  but  it  has 
long  since  been  shown  that  they  are  only  modifications  of 
our  consciousness.  It  has  been  justly  said  that  our  knowl- 
edge of  beings  is  purely  indirect,  limited,  relative;  it  does 
not  reach  to  the  beings  themselves  in  their  absolute  reality 
and  essences,  but  only  to  their  accidents,  their  modes,  their 
relations,  limitations,  differences,  and  qualities;  all  which 
are  manners  of  conceiving  and  knowing  which  not  only 
do  not  impart  to  knowledge  the  absolute  character  which 
some  persons  attribute  to  it,  but  even  positively  exclude  it. 
"  Even  substance  is  but  a  purely  hypothetical  postulated 
residuum  after  the  abstraction  of  all  observable  qualities." 
If,  then,  our  conception  of  an  object  in  no  way  resembles 
the  object, —  if  heat,  for  example,  can  be,  in  no  sense, 
like  a  live  coal,  nor  pain  like  the  pricking  of  a  pin, — 
much  less  can  a  word  by  which  we  denote  an  object  be 
other  than  a  mere  hieroglyphic,  or  teach  us  a  jot  or  tittle 
about  the  world  of  sense  or  thought.  Again,  the  fact 
that  "spirit"  once  signified  ''breath,"  and  animus,  dvefid<;, 
"  air,"  lends  no  countenance  to  materialism.  "  When  we 
impose  on  a  phenomenon  of  the  physical  order  a  moral 
denomination,  we  do  not  thereby  spiritualize  matter;  and 
because    we    assign    a    physical   denomination    to    a   moral 


FALLACIES    IX    WORDS.  289 

phenomenon,  we  do  not  materialize  spirit."  Even  if  the 
words  by  which  we  designate  mental  conceptions  are  de- 
rived from  material  analogies,  it  does  not  follow  that  our 
conceptions  were  themselves  originally  material;  and  we 
shall  in  vain  try  to  account  by  any  external  source  for 
the  relations  of  words  among  themselves.  It  is  told  of 
the  metaphysician,  Cudworth,  that,  in  reply  to  a  person  who 
ridiculed  the  doctrine  of  innate  ideas,  he  told  him  to  take 
down  the  first  book  that  came  to  hand  in  his  library,  open 
at  random,  and  read.     The  latter  opened  Cicero's  "Offices," 

and   began   reading   the   first  sentence,  "  Qnamqiiam " 

"Stop!"  cried  Cudworth,  '"it  is  enough.  Tell  me  how 
through  the  senses  you  acquire  the  idea  of  quamquamy 

It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  a  language  is  no  more 
than  a  mere  collection  of  words.  The  terms  we  employ 
are  symbols  only,  which  can  never  fully  express  our 
thought,  but  shadow  forth  far  more  than  it  is  in  their 
power  distinctly  to  impart.  Lastly,  there  are  in  every 
language,  as  another  has  truly  said,  a  vast  number  of 
words,  such  as  "  sacrifice,"  "  sacrament,"  "  mystery," 
"  eternity,"  which  may  be  explained  by  the  idea,  though 
the  idea  cannot  be  discovered  by  the  word,  as  is  the  case 
with  whatever  belongs  to  the  mystery  of  the  mind;  and 
this  of  itself  is  enough  to  disprove  the  conclusion  which 
nominalists  would  draw  from  the  origin  of  words,  and  to 
prove  that,  whatever  the  derivation  of  "  truth,"  its  ety- 
mology can  establish  nothing  concerning  its  essence;  and 
we  are  still  at  liberty  to  regard  it  as  independent,  immu- 
table, and  eternal,  having  its  archetype  in  the  Divine 
mind. 

Among  the  terms  used  in  literary  criticism,  few  are 
more    loosely  employed  than  the  word  "  creative "  as  ap- 


290  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

plied  to  men  of  gonius.  Homer,  Dante,  Shakespeare,  are 
said  to  have  "creative  power";  and,  as  a  figure  of  speech, 
the  remark  is  true  enough:  but,  strictly  speaking,  only 
Omnipotence  can  create;  man  can  only  combine.  The 
genius  of  a  great  painter  may  fill  his  gallery  with  the 
most  fantastic  representations,  but  every  piece  of  which 
his  paintings  are  composed  exists  in  natui*e.  Few  artists 
have  been  more  original  than  Claude  Lorraine;  3'et  all  his 
paintings  were  composed  of  picturesque  materials  gathered 
from  different  scenes  in  nature,  united  with  consummate 
taste  and  skill,  and  idealized  by  his  exquisite  imagination. 
To  make  a  modern  statue  there  is  a  great  melting  down 
of  old  bronze.  The  essence  of  originality  is  not  that  it 
creates  new  material,  but  that  it  invents  new  combinations 
of  material,  and  imparts  new  life  to  whatever  it  discovers 
or  combines,  whether  of  new  or  old.  Shakespeare's  genius 
is  at  no  other  time  so  incontestably  sovereign  as  when  he 
borrows  most, —  when  he  adapts  or  moulds^,  in  a  manner 
so  perfect  as  to  resemble  a  new  creation,  the  old  chronicles 
and  "  Italian  originals,"  which  have  been  awaiting  the 
vivida  vis  that  makes  them  live  and  move.  Xon  )iova,  sed 
note,  sums  up  the  whole  philosophy  of  the  subject.  "  Orig- 
inality," says  an  able  writer,  "  never  works  more  fruitfully 
than  in  a  soil  rich  and  deep  with  the  foliage  of  ages." 

The  word  "same"  is  often  used  in  a  way  that  leads  to 
error.  Persons  say  "  the  same  "  when  they  mean  similar. 
It  has  been  asked  whether  the  ship  Argo,  in  which  Jason 
sought  the  Golden  Fleece,  and  whose  decaying  timbers,  as 
she  lay  on  the  Greek  shore,  a  grateful  and  reverent  nation 
had  patched  up,  till,  in  process  of  time,  not  a  plank  of  the 
original  ship  was  left,  was  still  "  the  same  "  ship  as  of  old. 
The  question  presents  no  diflBculty,  if  we  remember  that 


FALLACIES    IN    WORDS.  291 

"  sameness,"  that  is  "  identity,"  is  an  absolute  term,  and  can 
be  affirmed  or  denied  only  in  an  absolute  sense.  No  man 
is  the  same  man  to-day  that  he  was  yesterday,  though  he 
may  be  very  similar  to  his  yesterday's  self. 

A  common  source  of  confusion  in  language  is  what 
logicians  call  "  ami)hibolous"  sentences, —  that  is,  sentences 
that  are  equivocal,  not  from  a  double  sense  in  any  word, 
but  because  they  admit  of  a  double  construction.  Quin- 
tilian  mentions  several  cases  where  litigation  arose  from 
this  kind  of  ambiguity  in  the  wording  of  a  will.  In  one 
case  a  testator  expressed  a  wish  that  a  statue  should  be 
erected,  and  used  the  following  language:  j^oni  statnani 
auveam  hastain  in  jiiatiu  tenentem.  The  question  arose 
whether  it  was  the  statue,  or  the  spear  only,  that  was  to 
be  of  gold.  It  is  well  known  that  punctuation  was  un- 
known to  the  Greeks  and  Romans;  and  hence  the  ancient 
oracles  were  able  to  deliver  responses,  which,  written  down 
by  the  priests  and  delivered  to  the  inquirers,  were  adapted, 
through  the  ambiguity  thus  caused,  to  save  the  credit  of 
the  oracle,  whether  the  expected  event  was  favorable  or 
unfavorable.  An  example  of  this  is  the  famous  response, 
Aio  te  yEucida  Bomaiios  riiicere  jwsse;  which  may  mean 
either,  "Thou,  Pyrrhus,  I  say,  shalt  subdue  the  Romans;" 
or,  "  I  say,  Pyrrhus,  that  the  Romans  shall  subdue  thee." 
A  better  illustration  is  the  remarkable  response  which  was 
given  when  an  oracle  was  consulted  regarding  the  success 
of  a  certain  military  expedition:  Ibis  et  redihis  nunquam 
perihis  in  hello,  which,  not  being  punctuated,  might  have 
been  translated  either:  "Thou  shalt  go,  and  shalt  never 
return,  thou  shalt  porish  in  battle;"  or,  "Thou  shalt  go 
and  return,  thou  shalt  never  perish  in  battle."  We  have 
an  example  of  amphibolous  sentences    in    English    in    the 


292  WORDS;  their  use  and  abuse. 

witch  prophecy,  "The  Duke  yet  lives  tliat  Henry  sliall 
depose,"  and  in  the  words  cited  l)y  Whately  from  the 
Nicene  Creed,  "  by  whom  all  things  were  made,"  which 
are  grammatically  referable  either  to  the  Father  or  to  the 
Son. 

Among  the  fallacies  in  words  may  be  classed  those  false 
impressions  which  some  writers  contrive  to  give,  while  at 
the  same  time  making  no  single  statement  that  is  untrue 
or  exceptionable.  Thus  in  Gibbon's  famous  history,  it  is 
not  by  what  he  expressly  says  regarding  Christianity,  that 
he  misleads  the  reader,  but  by  what  he  suppresses,  hints,  and 
insinuates.  As  Paley  long  ago  observed,  the  subtle  error 
rather  lies  hid  in  the  sinuous  folds  than  is  directly  appar- 
ent on  the  surface  of  the  polished  style.  Never  openly 
attacking  Christianity,  or  advancing  any  opinions  which 
he  might  find  it  difficult  to  defend,  he  yet  contrives  to 
leave  an  impression  adverse  to  the  theor}^  of  its  divine 
origin.  In  like  manner,  it  is  not  usually  by  false  state- 
ments that  Hume  perverts  the  truth  of  English  history; 
but  his  unfairness  secretes  itself  so  subtly  in  the  turns  of 
the  words,  that,  when  you  seek  to  point  it  out,  it  is  gone. 

Even  the  Natural  Sciences,  in  which  precision  of  lan- 
guage is  vital,  are  disfigured  by  words  which,  if  closely 
scrutinized,  are  found  to  be  full  of  error.  It  is  true  that 
as  the  jDrogress  of  inquiry  brings  fresh  facts  into  \\ew, 
the  words  which  serve  to  illustrate  exploded  theories  are 
usually  rejected;  yet  names  ai'e  sometimes  retained  after 
they  cease  to  be  correct  or  expressive.  The  word  "  electric- 
ity "  suggests  thunder-storms,  shocks  at  scientific  soirees, 
and  Morse's  telegraph;  yet  it  means  only '' the  amber- 
force."  The  explanation  of  this  name  is  that  the  observa- 
tion of  the  fact  tliat  amber,  when  rubbed,  attracts  to  itself 


THE    FALLACIES    IN    WORDS.  293 

light  liodies,  was  tlic  first  step  taken  toward  the  establi.-h- 
nient  of  thi>  inarvullous  science.  So  tlie  name  "oxygen," 
or  "  the  acid-producer,"  was  given  to  the  gas  so  called, 
when  it  was  considered  to  be  the  cause  of  acidity.  In  1774 
the  gas  called  "  muriatic  acid"  was  renamed  by  Scheele,  in 
consequence  of  certain  discoveries  made  by  him,  "dephlo- 
gisticated  muriatic  acid."  By  and  by  the  doctrine  of  phlo- 
giston was  exploded,  and  Lavoisier,  having  to  modify  the 
name,  changed  it  to  "  oxymuriatic,"  or  "oxygenized  muri- 
atic acid."  When,  again,  it  was  found  that  this  pungent 
gas  was  a  simple  body,  and  actually  entered  into  the  consti- 
tution of  the  muriatic,  or,  as  it  is  now  called,  hydrochloric 
acid, —  that  the  oxygen  merely  witlidrew  from  the  latter 
the  second  constituent,  viz.,  hydrogen, —  the  name  had  to 
be  altered  again,  and  this  time  Sir  Humphrey  Davy  sug- 
gested "chlorine,"  or  "  the  green  gas,"  which  seems  likely 
to  be  permanent.  Again,  until  lately,  "caloric"  was  a 
term  in  constant  use  among  chemists,  and  designated  some- 
thing that  produced  heat.  Now  this  doctrine  is  abandoned, 
and  heat  is  said  to  be  the  result  of  molecular  and  ethereal 
vibration.  All  matter  is  supposed  to  be  immersed  in  a 
highly  elastic  medium,  which  is  called  "  ether."  But  what 
is  this  "ether,"  of  which  heat,  light,  electricity,  and  sound, 
are  only  so  many  different  modes  or  manifestations? 
"'Ether'  is  a  myth, —  an  abstraction,  useful,  no  doubt,  for 
the  purpose  of  physical  speculation,  but  intended  rather  to 
mai'k  the  present  horizon  of  our  knowledge,  than  to  repre- 
sent anything  which  we  can  grasp  either  with  our  senses 
or  our  reason."  * 

The  form  of  cerebral  congestion  known  as  "  sunstroke," 
was  erroneously  so  named  from  the  popular  belief  that  it 

♦Max  Muller's  "Science  of  Language,"  Vol.  II,  p.  COO. 


294  words;  in  EI II  use  xVND  abuse. 

is  caused  by  a  sudden  concentration  of  the  sun's  rays  upon 
a  focal  point.  It  is  now  well  known  that  persons  may  be 
attacked  by  this  disease  who  have  not  been  exposed  to  the 
sun's  rays, —  that  it  occurs  often  at  night, —  and  that  its 
cause  is  not  extreme  heat  only,  but  the  exhaustion  con- 
sequent upon  over-exertion  —  especially  of  the  brain  — 
anxiety,  and  worry. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE   FALLACIES   IX   "WORDS  —  {continued). 

I  never  learned  rhetorike  certain ; 

Things  that  I  speke,  it  mote  be  bare  and  plain.— Chaucer. 

Here  is  our  great  infelicity,  that,  when  single  words  signify  complex  ideas, 
one  word  can  never  distinctly  manifest  all  the  parts  of  a  complex  idea. — 
Isaac  Watts, 

If  reputation  attend  these  conquests  which  depend  on  the  fineness  and 
niceties  of  words,  it  is  no  wonder  if  the  wit  of  men  so  employed  should  per- 
plex and  subtilize  the  signification  of  sounds.— Locke. 

XT  lia.s  been  remarked  by  Archbishop  Whately  that  the 
-*-  words  whose  ambiguity  is  the  most  frequently  over- 
looked, and  produces  the  greatest  amount  of  confusion  of 
thought  and  fallacy,  are  the  commonest, —  the  very  ones 
whose  meaning  is  supposed  to  be  best  understood.  "  Familiar 
acquaintance  is  perpetually  mistaken  for  accurate  knowl- 
edge."    Such  a  word  is  "  luxury." 

A  favorite  theme  for  newspaper  declamations  in  those 
days  is  the  luxury  and  extravagance  of  the  American 
people,  especially  of  the  noureaux  riches  whose  fortunes 
have  been  of  mushroom  growth.  It  is  easy  to  declaim 
thus  against  luxury, —  that  is,  against  the  use  of  things 
which,  at  any  particular  period,  are  not  deemed  indispensa- 
ble to  life,  health,  and  comfort;  but  what  do  those  who 
indulge  in  this  cheap  denunciation  mean  by  the  term?  Is 
not  luxury  a  purely  relative  term?  Is  there  a  single  article 
of  dress,  food  or  furniture  which  can  be  pronounced  an 
absolute  luxury,  without  regard  to  the  wealth  or  poverty  of 
him  who  enjoys  it?    Are  not  the  luxuries  of  one  generation 

295 


29G  woiiDs;  their  use  and  abuse. 

or  country  the  necessaries  of  another?  Persons  wlio  are 
familiar  with  history  know  that  Alfred  the  Great  had  not  a 
chair  to  sit  down  upon,  nor  a  chimney  to  carry  off  his 
smoke;  that  William  the  Conquerer  was  unacquainted 
with  the  luxury  of  a  feather  bed,  if  it  can  be  called  one; 
that  the  early  aristocracy  of  England  lived  on  the  ground 
floor,  without  drainage;  that  in  the  Middle  Ages  shirts 
were  deemed,  a  useless  superfluity,  and  men  were  even  put 
in  the  pillory  for  wearing  them;  that  night-shirts  were 
esteemed  a  still  more  needless  luxury,  and  persons  of  all 
ranks  and  classes  slept  in  the  first  costume  of  Adam;  that 
travelling  carriages  are  an  ingenious  invention  of  modern 
effeminacy;  that  the  men  who  first  carried  umbrellas  in 
the  streets,  even  in  the  severest  rain-storms,  were  hooted  at 
as  dandies  and  coxcombs;  that  the  nobles  and  dames  of  the 
most  brilliant  epochs  of  England's  annals  ate  with  their 
fingers,  generally  in  couples,  out  of  one  trencher  on  a  bare 
table;  and  that  when  forks  were  introduced,  they  were 
long  hotly  opposed  as  an  extravagance,  and  even  denounced 
by  many  as  a  device  of  Satan,  to  offer  an  aflfront  to  Provi- 
dence, who  had  provided  man  with  fingers  to  convey  his 
food  to  his  mouth.  In  the  introduction  to  Hollinshed's 
"  Chi'onicles,"  published  in  1577,  there  is  a  bitter  complaint 
of  the  multitude  of  chimneys  lately  erected,  of  the  exchange 
of  straw  pallets  for  mattresses  or  flock  beds,  and  of  wooden 
platters  for  earthenware  and  pewter.  In  another  place, 
the  writer  laments  that  oak  only  is  used  for  building, 
instead  of  willow  as  heretofore;  adding,  that  "formerly 
our  houses  indeed  were  of  willow,  but  our  men  were  of 
oak;  but  now  that  our  houses  are  of  oak,  our  men  are  not 
only  of  willow,  but  some  altogether  of  straw,  which  is  a 
sore  alteration." 


THE    FALLACIES    IX    WORDS.  29'> 

Erasmus  tells  us  that  salt  beef  and  strong  ale  consti- 
tuted the  chief  part  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  breakfast,  and 
that  similar  refreshments  were  served  to  her  in  bed  for 
supper.  There  is  not  a  single  able-bodied  workingnian  in 
the  United  States  who  does  not  enjoy  fare  which  would 
have  been  deemed  luxurious  by  men  of  high  station  in 
the  iron  reign  of  the  Tudors;  hardly  a  thriving  shop- 
keeper who  does  not  occupy  a  house  which  English  nobles 
in  1650  would  have  envied;  hardly  a  domestic  servant  or 
factory  girl  who  does  not  on  Sundays  adorn  herself  with 
apparel  which  would  have  excited  the  admiration  of  the 
duchesses  in  Queen  Elizabeth's  ante-rooms.  Xenophon  ac- 
counts for  the  degeneracy  of  the  Persians  by  their  luxury, 
which,  he  says,  was  carried  to  such  a  pitch  that  they  used 
gloves  to  protect  their  hands.  Tea  and  cofPee  were  once 
denounced  as  idle  and  injurious  luxuries;  and  throughout 
the  larger  part  of  the  world  tooth-brushes,  napkins,  sus- 
penders, bathing-tubs,  and  a  hundred  other  things  now 
deemed  indispensable  to  the  health  or  comfort  of  civilized 
man,  would  be  regarded  as  proofs  of  effeminacy  and  ex- 
travagance. 

Luxury  has  been  a  favorite  theme  of  satire  and  denun- 
ciation by  poets  and  moralists  from  time  imnieniorial. 
But  it  may  be  doubted  whether  in  nations  or  individuals 
its  effects,  even  w^hen  it  rages  most  fiercely,  are  half  so 
pernicious  as  those  springing  from  that  indifference  to 
comforts  and  luxuries  which  is  sometimes  dignified  with 
the  name  of  contentment,  but  which  is  only  another  name 
for  sheer  laziness.  While  thousands  are  ruined  by  prodi- 
gality and  extravagance,  tens  of  thousands  are  kept  in 
poVerty  by  indifference  to  the  comforts  and  ornaments  of 
life, —  by    a    too    feeble    development    of    those   desires    to 


)i98  WOUDS-    Til  mil    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

gratify  which  the  mass  of  men  are  striving.  It  is  a  bad 
sign  when  a  man  is  content  with  the  bare  necessities  of 
life,  and  aspires  to  nothing  higher;  and  equally  ominous 
is  it  when  a  nation,  however  rich  or  powerful,  is  satisfied 
with  the  capital  and  glories  it  has  already  accumulated. 
Cry  up  as  we  may  the  virtues  of  simplicity  and  frugality, 
it  is  yet  quite  certain  that  a  people  content  to  live  upon 
garlic,  macaroni,  or  rice,  are  at  the  very  lowest  point  in 
the  scale  both  of  intellect  and  morality.  A  civilized  man 
differs  from  a  savage  principally  in  the  multiplicity  of  his 
wants.  The  truth  is,  man  is  a  constitutionally  lazy  being, 
and  requires  some  stimulus  to  prick  him  into  industry. 
He  must  have  many  difficulties  to  contend  with,  many 
clamorous  appetites  and  tastes  to  gratify,  if  you^would 
bring  out  his  energies  and  virtues;  and  it  is  because  they 
are  always  grumbling, —  because,  dissatisfied  amid  the 
most  enviable  enjoyments,  they  clamor  and  strive  for  more 
and  more  of  what  Voltaire  calls  les  superjlues  choses,  si 
n^cessaires, —  that  the  English  people  have  reached  their 
present  pinnacle  of  prosperity,  and  accumulated  a  wealth 
which  almost  enables  them  to  defy  a  hostile  world. 

Among  the  familiar  words  that  we  employ,  few  have 
been  more  frecjuently  made  the  instrument  of  sophistry 
than  "nature"  and  "art."  There  are  many  persons  who 
oppose  the  teaching  of  elocution,  because  they  like  a 
"natural"  and  "artless"  eloquence,  to  which,  they  think, 
all  elaborate  training  is  opposed,  Yet  nothing  is  more 
certain  than  that  nature  and  art,  between  which  there 
is  supposed  to  be  an  irreconcilable  antagonism,  are  often 
the  very  same  thing.  What  is  more  natural  than  that  a 
man  who  lacks  vocal  power  should  cultivate  and  develop 
his  voice  by  vocal  exercises;  or  that,  if  he  is  conscious  of 


THE    FALLACIES    IX    WORDS.  299 

faults  in  his  manner  of  speaking, —  his  articulation,  ges- 
tur^es,  etc., —  he  should  try,  by  the  help  of  a  good  teacher, 
to  overcome  them?  So  with  the  style  of  a  writer;  what 
is  more  natural  than  for  one  who  feels  that  he  has  not 
adequately  expressed  his  thought,  to  blot  the  words  first 
suggested  and  try  others,  and  yet  others,  till  he  despairs 
of  further  improvement?  There  are  subjects  so  deep  and 
complex,  ideas  so  novel  and  abstruse,  that  the  most  prac- 
tised writer  cannot  do  justice  to  them  without  great  labor. 
A  conscientious  author  is,  therefore,  continually  transpos- 
ing clauses,  reconstructing  sentences,  substituting  words, 
polishing  and  repolishing  paragraphs;  and  this,  unques- 
tianably,  is  "  art,"  or  the  application  of  means  to  an  end. 
But  is  this  art  inconsistent  with  nature? 

Similar  to  the  fallacy  which  lurks  in  the  words  "na- 
ture" and  "natural,"  as  thus  employed,  is  that  which  lurks 
in  a  popular  use  of  the  word  "simplicity."  It  has  been 
happily  said  that  while  some  men  talk  as  if  to  speak 
naturally  were  to  speak  like  a  natural,  others  talk  as  if 
to  speak  with  siirfplicity  meant  to  speak  like  a  simpleton. 
But  what  is  true  "  simplicity,"  as  applied  to  literary 
composition?  Is  it  old,  worn-out  commonplace, — "straw 
that  has  been  thrashed  a  hundred  times  without  wheat," 
as  Carlyle  says, —  the  shallowest  ideas  expressed  in  tame 
and  insipid  language?     Or  is  it  not  rather 

"Nature  to  advantage  dressed, 
What  oft  was  thought,  but  ne'er  so  well  expressed," — 

in  other  words,  a  just  and  striking  thought  expressed  in 
the  aptest  and  most  impressive  language?  Those  persons 
who  declaim  against  the  employment  of  art  in  speaking 
and  writing,  forget  that  we  are  all  exceedingly  artilicial, 
conventional  beings.    Without  training,  a  speaker  is  almost 


300  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

sure  to  be  awkward  in  gesture  and  unnatural  in  utter- 
ance. The  very  preacher  who  in  the  street  forgets  himself 
and  uses  the  most  natural  gesticulation  and  tones,  will 
become  self-conscious  the  moment  he  ascends  the  pul[)it, 
and  speak  in  a  falsetto  key.  It  is  to  get  rid  of  these 
artificial  habits  that  "art"  (which  is  the  employment  of 
proper  means)  is  needed. 

How  many  controversies  about  the  "  transmutation  of 
Species,"  and  the  "  fixity  of  Species,"  would  have  been 
avoided,  had  the  scientists  who  use  these  phrases  fully 
pondered  their  meaning,  or  rather  no-meaning!  Some 
writers  have  tried  to  explain  the  law  of  constancy  in 
transmission,  and  its  independence  of  the  law  of  varia- 
tion, by  maintaining  that  it  is  the  Species  only,  not  the 
individual,  which  is  reproduced.  "  Species,"  says  Buffon, 
"  are  the  only  beings  in  nature."  A  sheep,  it  is  said,  is 
always  and  everywhere  a  sheep,  and  a  man  a  man,  repro- 
ducing the  specific  type,  but  not  necessarily  reproducing 
any  individual  peculiarities.  This  hypothesis  is  a  striking 
example  of  the  confusion  which  results  from  the  intro- 
duction of  old  metaphysical  ideas  into  science.  It  is  evi- 
dent, as  a  late  writer  has  clearly  shown,  that  Species 
cannot  reproduce  itself,  for  Species  does  not  exist.  It  is 
an  entity,  an  abstract  idea,  not  a  concrete  fact. 

The  thing  Species  no  more  exists  than  the  thing  Good- 
ness or  the  thing  Whiteness.  "  Nature  only  knows  indi- 
viduals. A  collection  of  individuals  so  closely  resembling 
each  other  as  all  sheep  resemble  each  other,  are  conven- 
iently classed  under  one  general  term.  Species;  but  this 
general  term  has  no  objective  existence;  the  absti'act  or 
typical  sheep,  apart  from  all  concrete  individuals,  has  no 
existence    out  of   our   systems.     Whenever    an    individual 


THE    FALLACIES    IX    WOKDS.  301 

sheep  is  born,  it  is  the  offspring  of  two  individual  sheep, 
whose  structures  and  dispositions  it  reproduces;  it  is  not 
the  offspring  of  an  abstract  idea;  it  does  not  come  into 
being  at  the  bidding  of  a  type,  which  as  a  Species  sits 
apart,  regulating  ovine  phenomena.  ,  .  If,  therefore, 
'transmutation  of  Species'  is  absurd,  '  fixit}'^  of  Species' 
is  not  a  whit  less  so.  That  which  does  not  exist  can 
neither  be  transmuted  nor  maintained  in  fixity.  Only 
individuals  exist;  they  resemble  their  parents,  and  they 
differ  from  their  parents.  Out  of  these  resemblances  we 
create  Species;  out  of  these  differences  we  create  Varie- 
ties; we  do  so  as  conveniences  of  classification,  and  then 
believe  in  the  reality  of  our  own  figments,"  * 

A  popular  fallacy,  which  is  partly  verbal,  is  the  notion, 
so  tenaciously  held  by  many,  that  exposure  to  hardship, 
and  even  want,  in  youth,  is  the  cause  of  the  bodily  vigor 
of  those  men  who  have  lived  to  a  good  age  in  countries 
with  a  rocky  soil  an-d  a  bleak  climate.  What  is  more 
natural,  it  is  argued,  than  that  hardslnps  should  harden 
the  constitution?  Look  at  the  Indians;  how  many  of  them 
live  till  eighty  or  ninety!  Yet  no  person  who  reasons 
thus  would  think,  if  engaged  in  cattle-breeding,  of  neg- 
lecting to  feed  and  shelter  his  animals  in  their  youth; 
nor  if  a  dozen  men,  out  of  a  hundred  who  had  faced  a 
battery,  should  survive  and  live  to  a  good  age,  would  he 
think  of  regarding  the  facing  of  batteries  as  conducive  to 
longevity.  The  truth  is,  that  early  hardships,  by  destroy- 
ing all  the  weak,  merely  prove  the  hardiness  of  the  sur- 
vivors,—  which  latter  is  the  cause,  not  the  effect,  of  their 
having  lived  through  such  a  training.  So  "  loading  a  gun- 
barrel    to    the    imi/.zli".  .iml    liiing  it    olf,  docs  not  (jiic  it 

♦" Wel^tl^iIl^lc^  Rovit^w,'  Si'iiteiuber,  1856. 


302  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

strength;  though  it  proves,  if  it  escape,  that  it  was 
strong." 

The  revelations  of  travellers  have  dissipated  the  illu- 
sions which  once  prevailed  concerning  the  hardiness  and 
health  of  the  Indians  and  other  savages.  The  savage,  it 
is  now  known,  lives  in  a  condition  but  one  degree  above 
starvation.  If  he  sink  below  it,  he  disappeai's  instantane- 
ously, as  if  he  had  never  been.  A  certain  amount  of 
hardship  he  can  endure;  but  it  has  limits,  which  if  he 
passes,  he  sinks  unnoticed  and  unknown.  There  is  no 
registrar  or  newspaper  to  record  that  a  unit  has  been  sub- 
tracted from  the  amount  of  human  existence.  It  is  true 
that  severe  diseases  are  rarely  seen  by  casual  visitors  of 
savage  tribes, —  and  why?  Because  death  is  their  doctor, 
and  the  grave  their  hospital.  When  patients  are  left 
wholly  to  nature,  nature  presses  very  hard  for  an  imme- 
diate payment  of  her  debt. 

An  ambiguous  word,  which  has  been  a  source  of  not  a 
little  error,  is  the  adjective  "  light,"  which  is  used  some- 
times in  a  literal,  sometimes  in  a  figurative  sense.  When 
writers  on  Agricultural  Chemisti-y  declare  that  what  are 
called  hennj  soils  ai*e  always  specifically  the  lir/htest,  the 
statement  looks  like  a  paradox.  By  "  heavy "  soils  are 
meant,  of  course,  not  those  which  are  the  weightiest,  but 
those  which  are  ploughed  with  difiiculty, —  the  effect  being 
like  that  of  dragging  a  heavy  weight.  So  some  articles 
of  food  are  supposed  to  be  liffht  of  digestion  because  they 
are  specificalhj  ligld.  Again,  there  is  a  popular  notion  that 
strong  drink  must  make  men  strong;  which  is  a  double 
fallacy,  since  the  word  "  strong "  is  applied  to  alcoholic 
liquors  and  to  the  human  body  in  entirely  different  senses, 


THE   FALLACIES   IX   WORDS.  303 

and  it  is  assumed  that  an  effect  must  be    like    its   cause, 
which  is  not  true. 

Another  ambiguous  term,  at  least  as  popularly  used,  is 
"  murder."  There  are  persons  who  assert  that  the  coup 
d'etat  of  Louis  Napoleon,  in  1851,  was  murder  in  the 
strictest  sense  of  the  term.  To  send  out  into  the  streets 
of  a  peaceful  town  a  party  of  men  dressed  in  uniform, 
with  muskets  and  bayonets  in  their  hands,  and  with  orders 
to  kill  and  plunder,  is  just  as  essentially  murder  and  rob- 
bery, it  is  said,  as  to  break  into  a  house  with  half-a-dozen 
companions  out  of  uniform,  and  do  the  same  things.  Was 
not  Orsini's  crime,  they  ask,  as  truly  a  murder  as  when  a 
burglar  kills  a  man  with  a  revolver  in  order  to  rob  him? 
So,  again,  there  are  Christian  moralists,  who,  when  asked 
for  proof  that  suicide  is  sinful,  adduce  the  Scriptural 
injunction,  "  Thou  shalt  do  no  murder,"  assuming  that 
suicide,  because  it  is  called  self-iiiHrder,  is  a  species  of 
"murder"  in  the  primary  sense  of  the  word.  It  is  evi- 
dent, however,  that  most,  if  not  all,  of  these  assertions 
are  founded  on  palpable  fallacies.  "Murder"  is  a  techni- 
cal terra,  and  means  the  wilful,  deliberate  killing,  without 
just  cause,  and  without  certain  specified  excuses,  of  a  man 
who  belongs  to  a  settled  state  of  society,  in  which  security 
is  afforded  to  life  and  property.  In  all  that  is  said  about 
the  atrocity  of  murder,  there  is  a  latent  reference  to  this 
state  of  things.  Were  the  "  Vigilance  Committee  "  of  San 
Francisco  murderers,  when  they  executed  criminals  ille- 
gally? Are  the  men  who  "lynch"  horse-thieves  on  our 
western  frontiers,  murderers?  Were  the  rebels  who,  in 
our  late  Civil  War,  shot  down  Union  soldiers,  murderers? 
The  common  sentiment  of  the  civilized  world  recog- 
nizes a  vast   difference  between    the  rights   and    duties  of 


304  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

sovereigns  and  subjects,  and  the  relations  of  nations  to 
each  other,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  rights  and  duties  of 
private  individuals  on  the  other;  and  hence  the  i-ules  of 
public  and  those  of  private  morality  must  be  essentially 
different.  According  to  legal  authority,  it  is  not  murder 
to  kill  an  alien  enemy  in  time  of  war;  nor  is  it  murder 
to  take  away  a  man's  life  by  perjury.  Revolutions  and 
coups  d'etat  most  persons  will  admit  to  be  sometimes 
justifiable;  and  both,  when  justifiable,  justify  a  certain 
degree  of  violence  to  person,  to  property,  or  to  previous 
engagements.  The  difficulty  is  to  tell  just  when,  and  how 
far,  violence  may  justify  and  be  justified.  It  has  been 
well  said  by  an  acute  and  original  writer  that  "  it  is  by 
no  means  the  same  thing  whether  a  man  is  plundered 
and  wounded  by  burglars,  or  by  the  soldiers  of  an  absolute 
king  who  is  trying  to  maintain  his  authority.  The  sack 
of  Perugia  shocked  the  sensibilities  of  a  great  part  of 
Europe;  but  if  the  Pope  had  privately  poisoned  one  of  his 
friends  or  servants  from  any  purely  personal  motive,  even 
the  blindest  religious  zeal  would  have  denounced  him  as 
a  criminal  unfit  to  live.  A  man  must  be  a  very  bitter 
Liberal  indeed,  who  really  maintains  that  the  violation  by 
a  sovereign  of  his  promissory  oath  of  office  stands  on 
precisely  the  same  footing  as  deliberate  perjury  in  an 
ordinary  court  of  justice."  Suicide,  it  is  evident,  lacks 
the  most  essential  characteristic  of  murder,  namely,  its 
inJiumanitij, —  the  injury  done  to  one's  neighbor  and  to 
others  by  the  Insecurity  they  are  made  to  feel.  Can  a  man 
rob  himself?  If  not,  how  can  he,  in  the  proper  sense  of 
the  word,  murder  himself? 

Take  another  case.     "When  Napoleon  Bonaparte  was  at 
the  climax  of  his  power,  and  the   entire   continent  lay  at 


THE    FALLACIES    IX    AVOllDS.  305 

his  feet,  he  aimed  a  blow  at  llie  naval  supremacy  of 
England,  which,  had  it  taken  effect,  would  have  fatally 
crippled  her  resources".  By  a  secret  article  in  the  Treaty 
of  Tilsit,  it  was  stipulated  that  he  and  Alexander,  the 
czar  of  Russia,  should  take  possession  of  the  fleets  of  the 
Neutral  Powers.  Mr.  Canning,  the  British  Prime  Min- 
ister, .^pw  the  peril,  and  instantly,  upon  learning  of  the 
intrigue,  dispatched  a  naval  force  under  Nelson  to  Copen- 
hagen, which  captured  the  Danish  fleet,  the  object  of  the 
confederates,  and  conveyed  it  to  Portsmouth.  The  viola- 
tion of  the  law  of  nations  involved  in  this  act  was  vehe- 
mently denounced  in  the  pulpit,  in  parliament,  and  on 
the  hustings;  and  to-day  there  are  many  persons  who 
regard  the  audacious  measure  as  little  better  than  pii"acy. 
The  world,  however,  has  not  sustained  the  charge.  Prob- 
lems arise  in  the  life  of  both  men  and  nations,  for  the 
solution  of  which  the  ordinary  rules  of  ethics  are  insuffi- 
cient. It  is  possible  to  kill  without  being  guilty  of  mur- 
der, to  rob  without  being  a  thief,  and  to  break  the  law 
of  nations  without  being  a  buccaneer.  The  justification 
of  the  British  Minister  lay  in  the  fact  that  Denmark  was 
powerless  to  resist  the  Continental  powers,  and  that  hei 
coveted  fleet,  if  not  seized  by  England,  would  have  been 
used  against  her. 

There  is  hardly  any  word  which  is  oftener  turned  into 
an  instrument  of  the  fallacy  of  ambiguity  than  "  theory." 
There  is  a  class  of  men  in  every  community,  of  limited  edu- 
cation and  narrow  observation,  who,  because  they  have 
mingled  in  the  world  and  dealt  with  aff"airs,  claim  to  be 
preeminently  jijraci/cf//  men,  and  ridicule  the  opinions  of 
thinkers  in  their  closets  as  the  speculations  of  "  mere 
tlu'oriats.'''     Not  disci-iiniiiating  carefully  between  the  word 


300  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

"  goncral "  and  the  word  "  abstract,"  and  regarding  as 
ahatnict  principles  what  are  in  nearly  all  cases  general  prin- 
ciples, they  regard  all  theorizing  as  synonymous  with  vis- 
i(Miary  speculation;  while  that  which  they  call  "  practical 
knowledge,"  and  which  they  fancy  to  be  wholly  devoid  of 
supposition  or  guesswork,  but  which  is  nothing  else  than  a 
heap  of  hasty  deductions  from  scanty  and  inaccurately 
observed  phenomena,  they  deem  more  trustworthy  tfian  the 
discoveries  of  science  and  the  conclusions  of  reason.  Yet, 
when  correctly  defined,  this  very  practical  knowledge,  so 
boastfully  opposed  to  theory,  in  reality  presupposes  it. 
True  practical  knowledge  is  simply  a  ready  discernment  of 
the  proper  modes  and  seasons  of  applying  to  the  common 
affairs  of  life  those  general  truths  and  principles  which  are 
deduced  from  an  extensive  and  accurate  observation  of 
facts,  by  minds  stored  with  various  knowledge,  accustomed 
to  investigation,  and  trained  to  the  art  of  reasoning;  or,  in 
other  words,  by  theorists.  Every  man  who  attempts  to 
trace  the  causes  or  effects  of  an  occurrence  that  falls  under 
his  persona]  observation,  theorizes.  The  only  essential  dis- 
tinction, in  most  cases,  between  "  practical  "  men  and  those 
whom  they  denounce  as  visionary,  is,  not  that  the  latter 
alone  indulge  in  speculation,  but  that  the  theories  of  the 
former  are  based  on  the  facts  of  their  own  experience, — 
those  that  happen  within  a  narrow  sphere,  and  in  a  single 
age;  while  the  conclusions  of  the  latter  are  deduced  from 
the  facts  of  all  ages  and  countries,  minutely  analyzed  and 
compared. 

Thus  the  "  practical "  farmer  does  not  hesitate  to  con- 
sult the  neighboring  farmers,  and  to  make  use  of  the 
results  of  their  experience  concerning  the  best  soils  for  cer- 
tain crops,   the  best    manures  for  those  soils,  etc.;    yet    if 


THE    FALLACIES    IX    WORuS.  307 

another  farmer,  instead  of  availing  himself  of  his  neighbors' 
experiences  only,  consults  a  book  or  books  containing  the 
digested  and  classified  results  of  a  thousand  farmers'  experi- 
ences touching  the  same  points,  he  is  called,  by  a  strange 
inconsistency,  "a  book-farmer,"  "a  mere  theorist."  The 
truth  is,  the  "  practical  "  man,  so  called,  extends  his  views 
no  farther  than  the  fact  before  him.  Even  when  he  is  so 
fortunate  as  to  learn  its  cause,  the  discovery  is  compara- 
tively useless,  since  it  affords  no  light  in  new  and  more 
complex  cases.  The  scientific  man,  unsatisfied  wiih  the 
observation  of  one  fact,  collects  many,  and  by  tracing  the 
points  of  resemblance,  deduces  a  comprehensive  truth  of 
universal  application.  "  Practical"  men  conduct  the  details 
of  ordinary  business  with  a  masterl}'  hand.  As  Burke  said 
of  George  Grenville,  they  do  admirably  well  so  long  as 
things  move  on  in  the  accustomed  channel,  and  a  new  and 
troubled  scene  is  not  opened;  but  they  are  not  fitted  to 
contend  successfully  with  the  difficulties  of  an  untried  and 
hazardous  situation.  When  "  the  high  roads  are  bi'oken 
up,  and  the  waters  are  out,"  when  a  new  state  of  things  is 
presented,  and  "  the  line  affords  no  pi'ecedent,"  then  it  is 
that  they  show  a  mind  trained  in  a  subordinate  sphere, 
formed  for  servile  imitation,  and  destined  to  borrow  its 
lights  of  another.  "  Expert  men,"  says  Bacon,  "  can  exe- 
cute, and  perhaps  judge  of  particulars,  one  by  one;  but 
the  general  counsels,  and  the  plots  and  marshalling  of 
affairs,  come  best  from  those  that  are  learned." 

Among  the  current  phrases  of  the  day,  by  which  men 
are  led  into  error,  one  of  the  commonest  is  the  expression 
"  doing  good."  Properly  understood,  "  to  do  good  "  is  to  do 
right;  but  the  phrase  has  acquired  a  technical  sense  which 
is  much  narrower.      It  means,  not   discharging  faithfully 


308  words;  tiikir  use  and  abuse. 

the  duties  of  one's  calling,  but  stepping  aside  from  its 
routine  to  relieve  the  poor,  the  distressed,  and  the  ignorant; 
or  to  reform  the  sinful.  The  lawyer  who,  for  a  fee,  con- 
scientiously gives  advice,  or  pleads  in  the  courts,  is  not 
thought  to  be  doing  good;  but  he  is  so  regarded  if  he  gra- 
tuitously defends  a  poor  man  or  a  widow.  A  merchant 
who  sells  good  articles  at  fair  prices,  and  pays  his  notes 
punctually,  is  not  doing  good;  bXit  he  is  doing  good,  if  he 
carries  broth  and  blankets  to  beggars,  teaches  in  a  Sunday 
School,  supports  a  Young  Men's  Christian  Association,  or 
distributes  ti-acts  to  the  irreligious.  Charitable  and  philan- 
thropic societies  of  every  kind  are  all  recognized  as  organs 
for  doing  good;  but  the  common  pursuits  of  life, —  law, 
medicine,  agriculture,  manufacturing,  trading,  etc., —  are 
not. 

The  incorrectness  of  this  view  wnll  be  seen  if  we  for  a 
moment  reflect  what  would  become  of  society,  including  its 
charitable  institutions  and  philanthropists,  should  its  differ- 
ent members  refuse  to  perform  their  respective  functions. 
Society  is  a  body  corporate,  which  can  exist, —  at  least,  in  a 
healthy  state, —  only  on  condition  that  each  man  performs 
the  specific  work  which  Providence,  or  his  own  sense  of  his 
fitness  for  it,  has  assigned  to  him.  Thus  one  man  tills  the 
ground;  another  engages  in  manufacturing;  a  third  gath- 
ers and  distributes  the  produce  of  labor  in  it^  various 
forms;  a  fourth  loans  or  exchanges  money;  a  fifth  makes 
or  executes  laws;  and  each  of  these  persons,  as  he  is  con- 
tributing to  the  general  good,  is  doing  good  as  truly  as  the 
most  devoted  clergyman  who  labors  in  the  cure  of  souls, 
or  philanthropist  who  carries  loaves  of  bread  to  hovels. 
To  deny  this,  it  has  been  well  said,  is  to  say  that  a  commis- 
sariat or  transport  corps  has  nothing  to  do  with  carrying 


THE   FALLACIES    IN    WOIiDS.  "^09 

on  a  war,  and  that  this  business  is  discharged  entirely  by 
the  men  who  stand  in  line  of  battle  or  mount  the  breach. 
The  popular  theory  proceeds  upon  two  assumptions, 
both  of  which  are  false;  first,  that  the  motives  which  urge 
men  to  diligence  in  their  callings  are  mean  and  paltry, — 
that  selfishness  is  the  mainspring  which  causes  all  the 
wheels  in  the  great  machine  of  society  to  revolve;  and, 
secondly,  that  pursuits  which  benefit  those  who  prosecute 
them  are  necessarily  selfish.  The  truth  is,  the  best  work, 
and  a  very  large  part  of  the  work,  done  in  every  calling, 
is  done  not  from  a  mean  and  sordid  hunger  for  its  emol- 
uments, whether  of  money,  rank,  or  fame,  but  from  a  sin- 
cere love  for  it,  and  pride  in  performing  its  duties  well 
and  creditably.  The  moment  a  man  begins  to  lose  this 
esprit  de  corps,  this  high-minded  professional  pride,  and 
to  find  his  reward  in  his  pay  and  not  in  his  work,  that 
moment  liis  work  begins  to  deteriorate,  and  he  ceases  to 
meet  with  the  highest  success.  If  pursuits  which  benefit 
those  who  follow  them  are  necessarily  selfish,  then  phil- 
anthropy itself  is  selfish,  for  its  rewards,  in  popular  esti- 
mation, are  of  the  noblest  kind.  No  sane  man  will 
depreciate  the  blessings  that  result  from  the  labors  of 
the  Howai'ds,  the  Frys,  and  the  Nightingales;  but  they 
bear  the  same  relation  to  the  ordinary  pursuits  of  life 
that  medicine  bears  to  food.  Doctors  and  surgeons  are 
useful  members  of  society;  but  their  services  are  less 
needed  than  those  of  butchers  and  bakers.  Let  the  farmer 
cease  to  sow  and  reap,  let  the  loom  and  the  anvil  be 
forsaken,  and  the  courts  of  justice  be  closed,  and  not  only 
will  the  pliilanthropist  starve,  but  society  will  speedily 
become  a  den  of  robbers,  if  it  does  not  utterly  cease  to 
exist. 


310  "WORDS;    THEIR    USE    AXD    ABUSE. 

Mr.  Mill  notices  an  ambiguity  in  the  word  "  right," 
which  has  been  made  the  occasion  of  an  ingenious  sophism. 
A  man  asserts  that  he  has  a  right  to  publish  his  opinions, 
which  may  be  true  in  one  sense,  namely,  that  it  would 
be  wrong  in  any  other  person  to  hinder  or  prevent  their 
publication;  but  it  does  not  follow  that,  in  publishing  his 
oi)inions,  he  is  doing  right,  for  this  is  an  entirely  distinct 
proposition  from  the  other.  Its  truth  depends  upon  two 
things;  first,  whether  he  has  taken  due  pains  to  ascertain 
that  the  opinions  are  true,  and  second,  whether  their 
publication  in  this  manner,  and  at  this  time,  will  proba- 
bly be  beneficial  to  the  interests  of  truth  on  the  whole. 
Another  sophism,  based  on  the  ambiguity  of  the  same 
word,  is  that  of  confounding  a  right  of  any  kind  with  a 
right  to  enforce  that  right  by  resisting  or  punishing  any 
violation  of  it,  as  in  the  case  of  a  people  whose  right  to 
good  government  is  ignored  by  tyrannical  rulers.  The 
right  or  liberty  of  the  people  to  turn  out  their  rulers  is 
so  far  from  being  the  same  thing  as  the  other,  that  "  it 
depends  upon  an  immense  number  of  vai*ying  circum- 
stances, and  is  altogether  one  of  the  knottiest  questions 
in  practical  ethics." 

Montaigne  complains  with  good  reason  that  too  many 
definitions,  explanations,  and  replies  to  difficult  questions, 
are  purely  verbal.  "I  demand  what  'nature'  is,  what 
'pleasure,'  'circle,'  and  'substitution'  are?  The  question  is 
about  woi'ds,  and  is  answer'd  accordingly.  A  stone  is  a 
body;  but  if  a  man  should  further  urge,  and  '  what  is  body?' 
'  Substance;'  'and  what  is  substance?'  and  so  on,  he  would 
drive  the  respondent  to  the  end  of  his  calepin.  We  ex- 
change one  word  for  another,  and  ofttimes  for  one  less 
understood.     I   better   know  what  man    is,  than    I   know 


THE    FALLACIES    IN    WORDS.  311 

what  animal  is,  or  mortal,  or  rational.  To  satisfie  one 
doubt,  they  pop  me  in  the  mouth  with  three;  'tis  the 
Hydra's  head."  *  There  was  a  time  when  it  was  said  that 
the  essence  of  gold  and  its  substantial  form  consisted  in 
its  aiireitij,  and  this  explanation  was  supposed  to  answer 
all  questions,  and  solve  all  doubts. 

Prom  all  this  it  will  be  seen  that  our  words  are,  to  a  large 
extent,  carelessly  employed, —  the  signs  of  crude  and  indefi- 
nite generalizations.  But  even  when  the  greatest  care  is 
taken  in  the  employment  of  words,  it  is  nearly  impossible  to 
choose  and  put  them  together  so  exquisitely  that  a  sophist 
may  not  wi-est  and  pervert  their  meaning.  Those  persons 
who  have  ever  had  a  lawsuit  need  not  be  told  how  much 
ingenious  argument  may  hang  on  a  shade  of  meaning,  to 
be  determined  objectively  without  reference  to  the  fancied 
intentions  of  the  legislator  or  the  writer.  Hardly  a  week 
passes,  but  a  valuable  bequest  is  successfully  contested 
through  some  loophole  of  ambiguous  phraseology.  If,  in 
ordinary  life,  words  represent  impressions  and  ideas,  in 
legal  instruments  they  are  thhujs;  they  dispose  of  prop- 
erty, liberty,  and  life;  they  express  the  will  of  the  law- 
giver, and  become  the  masters  of  our  social  being.  Yet 
so  carelessly  are  they  used  by  lawyers  and  legislators, 
that  half  the  money  spent  in  litigation  goes  to  determine 
the  meanings  of  words  and  phrases.  O'Connell  used  to 
assert  that  he  could  drive  a  coach-and-six  through  an  Act 
of  Parliament.  Many  of  our  American  enactments  yawn 
with  chasms  wide  enough  for  a  whole  railway  train.  But 
even  when  laws  have  been  framed  with  the  most  consum- 
mate skill,  the  subtlety  of  a  Choate  or  a  Follett  may  twist 
what  appears    to  be  the  clearest  and    most    unmistakable 

♦"Essays,"  Cotton's  edition. 


312  WORDS;    THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

language  into  a  meaning  tlio  very  opposite  to  that  which 
the  common  sense  of  mankind  would  give  it. 

I  have  heard  Judge  Story  make  the  following  state- 
ment to  show  the  extreme  difficulty  of  framing  a  statute 
so  as  to  avoid  all  ambiguity  in  its  language.  Being  once 
employed  by  Congress  to  draft  an  important  law,  he  spent 
six  months  in  trying  to  perfect  its  phraseology,  so  that  its 
sense  would  be  clear  beyond  a  shadow  of  a  doubt,  leaving 
not  the  smallest  loophole  for  a  lawyer  to  creep  through. 
Yet,  in  less  than  a  year,  after  having  heard  the  arguments 
of  two  able  attorneys,  in  a  suit  which  came  before  him  as 
a  Judge  of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court,  he  was 
utterly  at  a  loss  to  decide  upon  the  statute's  meaning! 

A  signal  illustration  of  the  ambiguity  that  lurks  in  the 
most  familiar  words,  is  furnished  by  a  legal  question  that 
was  fruitful  of  controversy  and  "  costs "  not  long  ago  in 
England.  An  English  nobleman.  Lord  Henry  Seymour, 
who  lived  in  Paris  many  years,  executed  *a  will  in  1856, 
wherein  he  made  a  bequest  of  property  worth  seventy 
thousand  pounds  to  the  hospitals  of  London  and  Paris. 
No  sooner  was  it  known  that  he  was  dead,  than  'the  ques- 
tion was  raised,  "What  does  'London'  mean?  Where  are 
its  limits,  and  wbat  is  its  area?  What  does  it  contain, 
and  what  does  it  exclude?"  Four  groups  of  claimants 
appeared,  each  to  some  extent  opposed  by  the  other  three. 
Group  the  first  said,  "  The  gift  is  obviously  confined  to  the 
Cifij  proper  of  London," —  that  is,  "  London  within  the 
walls,"  comprising  little  more  than  half  of  a  square  mile. 
"Not  so,"  protested  group  the  second;  "it  extends  to  all 
the  hospitals  within  the  old  bills  of  mortality," — that  is, 
London,  Westminster,  Southwark,  and  about  thirty  out- 
parishes,  but  excluding  Mar3^1ebone,  St.  Pancras,  Padding- 


THE    FALLACIES    IX    WORDS.  313 

ton,  Chelsea,  and  everything  beyond.  Group  the  third 
insisted  that  "London"  included  "all  the  area  within 
the  metropolitan  boroughs";  while  group  the  fourth,  for 
cogent  reasons  of  their  own,  were  positive  that  the  testator 
meant,  and  the  true  construction  was,  nothing  less  than 
the  whole  area  included  within  the  Registrar-General's 
and  the  Census  Commissioner's  interpretation  of  the  word 
"  Metropolis."  The  Master  of  the  Rolls  decided  that  the 
testator  meant  to  use  the  word  "London"  in  its  full,  com- 
j/Iete,  popular  sense,  as  including  all  the  busily  occupied 
districts  of  what  is  usually  called  the  Metropolis,  as  it 
existed  in  the  year  when  the  will  was  made.  No  sooner, 
however,  was  this  vexed  question  settled,  than  another, 
hardly  less  puzzling,  arose, —  namely.  What  is  a  "  Hospi- 
tal"? Nearly  every  kind  of  charitable  institution  put  in  its 
claim;  but  it  was  finally  decided  that  only  such  charities 
should  share  in  the  bequest  as  fell  within  the  definition  of 
the  French  word  hospice  used  in  the  will. 

Another  perplexing  question  which  came  before  the^ 
English  coui'ts  some  years  ago,  and  which  not  less  vividly 
shows  the  importance  of  attention  to  the  words  we  use, 
related  to  the  meaning  of  the  word  "  team,"  as  used  by 
writers  generally,  and  used  in  a  written  agreement.  A 
certain  noble  duke  made  an  agreement  with  one  of  his 
t(mants  in  Oxfordshire  concerning  the  occupancy  of  a 
i'linn,  and  a  portion  of  the  agreement  was  couched  in  the 
following    terms:  "The  tenant  to  perform    each  year    for 

the   Duke   of  ,  at  the  rate   of  one    day's   team-work, 

with  two  horses  and  one  proper  person,  for  every  fifty 
pounds  of  rent,  when  required  (except  at  hay  or  corn  har- 
vest), without  being  paid  for  the  same."  In  other  words, 
the  rent   of   the  farm  was  made  up  of   two  portions,  the 


314  words;  tiieiu  use  and  abuse. 

larger  being  a  money  payment,  and  the  former  a  certain 
amount  of  farm  service.  All  went  on  quietly  and  smoothly 
in  reference  to  this  agreement,  until  one  particular  day, 
when  the  duke's  agent  or  bailiff  desired  the  farmer  to  send 
a  cart  to  fetch  coals  from  a  railway  station  to  the  ducal 
mansion.  "  Certainly  not,"  said  the  farmer.  "  I'll  send 
the  horses  and  a  man,  but  you  must  find  the  cart." 
"Pooh,  pooh!  what  do  you  mean?  Does  not  your  agree- 
ment bind  you  to  do  team-work  occasionally  for  his  Grace?" 
"Yes,  and  here's  the  team;  two  horses  and  a  careful  man 
to  drive  them."  "  But  there  can't  be  a  team  without  a 
cart  or  wagon."  "  0  yes,  there  can,  the  horses  are  the 
team."  "  No,  the  horses  and  cart  together  are  the  team." 
The  question  which  the  court  was  called  on  to  decide  in 
the  lawsuit  which  followed,  was, — What  is  a  "  team  "?  The 
case  was  at  first  tried  at  Oxford,  before  a  common  jury, 
who  gave  a  verdict  substantially  for  the  duke.  A  rule 
was  afterward  obtained,  with  a  view  to  bring  the  question 
of  definition  before  the  judges  at  the  Court  of  Queen's 
Bench.  The  counsel  for  the  duke  contended  that  as  team- 
work cannot  be  done  by  horses  without  a  cart  or  wagon,  it 
is  obvious  that  a  team  must  include  a  vehicle  as  well  as  the 
horses  by  which  it  was  to  be  drawn.  Mr.  Justice  A.  said 
that,  in  the  coui'se  of  his  reading,  he  had  met  with  some 
lines  which  tend  to  show  that  the  team  is  separate  from 
the  cart, — 

"Giles  Jelt  was  sleeping,  in  his  cart  he  lay; 
Some  waggish  pilf  rers  stole  his  team  away. 
Giles  wakes  and  cries,  'Ods  Bodikins,  what's  here? 
WTiy,  how  now:  am  I  Giles  or  not? 
If  he,  I've  lost  six  geldings  to  my  smart; 
If  not,  Ods  Bodikins,  I've  found  a  cart." " 

Mr.  Justice  B.  quoted  a  line  from  Wordsworth,— 

"My  jolly  team  will  work  alone  for  me," 


THE    FALLACIES    IN    WORDS.  315 

as  proving  the  fai-raer's  interpretation,  seeing  that,  though 
horses  might  possibly  be  jolly,  a  cart  cannot.  The  counsel 
for  His  Grace  urged  that  the  dictionaries  of  Johnson  and 
Walker  both  speak  of  a  team  as  "'  a  number  of  horses 
drawing  the  same  carriage."  "True,"  said  Justice  A.  "do 
not  these  citations  prove  that  the  team  and  the  carriage 
are  distinct  things?"  "No,"  replied  the  counsel  on  the 
duke's  side;  "because  a  team  without  a  cart  would  be  of 
no  use."  He  cited  the  description  given  by  Caisar  of  the 
mode  of  fighting  in  chariots  adopted  by  the  ancient  Britons, 
and  of  the  particular  use  and  meaning  of  the  word  tema- 
nem.  f'rom  Csesar  he  came  down  to  Gray,  the  English 
poet,  and  cited  the  lines, — 

"Oft  did  the  han'eet  to  their  sickle  yield, 

Their  furrow  oft  the  stubborn  glebe  hath  broke; 
How  jocund  did  they  drive  their  team  afield, 
How  bowed  the  wood  beneath  their  sturdy  stroke;" 

and  from  Gray  he  came  down  to  the  far-famed  "  Bull 
Run"  aftair  in  the  recent  American  civil  war,  a  graphic 
account  of  which  told  that  "the  teamsters  cut  the  traces 
of  the  horses." 

The  counsel  for  the  farmer,  on  the  other  hand,  referred 
to  Richardson's  English  dictionary,  and  to  Bosworth's 
Anglo-Saxon  dictionary,  for  support  to  the  assertion  that 
a  team  implies  only  the  horses,  not  the  vehicle  also;  and 
he  then  gave  the  following  citations  to  the  >aiii('  effect: 
From   Spenser, — 

"Thee  a  ploup;luiiau  all  unnioetin;;  foiitul. 
As  he  his  toilsonie  team  that  way  did  t,'uidc. 
And  brought  thee  up  a  ploughinun'a  state  to  bide.'" 

From  Shakespeare, — 

"  We  fairies  that  do  run. 
By  the  triple  Hecat's  team, 
From  the  presence  of  the  sun, 
Following  darkness  like  a  dream." 


316  words;   tueir  use  and  abuse. 

Again  from  Shakespeare, — 

"  I  am  in  love,  but  a  team  of  horse  shall 
Not  pluck  that  from  me,  nor  who  "lis  I  love." 

From  Dryden, — 

"He  heaved  with  more  than  human  force  to  move 
A  weighty  straw,  the  labor  of  a  team." 

Again  from  Dryden, — 

"Any  number,  passing  in  a  line; 
Like  a  long  team  of  snowy  swans  on  high. 
Which  clap  their  wings  and  cleave  the  liquid  sky." 

Spenser,  Roscommon,  Martineau,  and  other  authorities, 
were  also  cited  to  the  same  purport,  and  all  the  light 
which  English  literature  could  throw  upon  the  jioint  was 
converged  upon  it.  The  learned  judges  were  divided  in 
their  opinions,  one  deciding  that  the  word  "team"  clearly 
implied  the  cart  as  well  as  the  horses,  two  other  judges 
deciding  that  it  was  enough  if  the  farmer  sent  the  horse 
and  the  driver  to  be  put  to  such  service  as  the  duke's 
agent  might  please.  The  arguments  by  which  each  sup- 
ported his  conclusion  were  so  acute,  cogent,  and  weighty, 
that  their  disagreement  seems  to  have  been  inevitable. 

The  English  historian,  Hallam,  says  of  the  language  of 
Hobbes  that  it  is  so  lucid  and  concise  that  it  would  be 
almost  as  improper  to  put  an  algebraical  process  in  differ- 
ent terms  as  some  of  his  metaphysical  paragraphs.  Hav- 
ing illustrated  his  precept  by  his  practice,  Hobbes  speaks 
with  peculiar  authority  on  the  importance  of  discrimina- 
tion in  the  use  of  words.  In  a  memorable  passage  of 
the  "  Leviathan,"  from  which  we  have  already  quoted,  he 
says:  "Seeing  that  truth  consisteth  in  the  right  ordering 
of  names  in  our  affirmations,  a  man  that  seeketh  precise 
truth  had  need  to  remember  what  every  name  he  useth 
stands  for,  and  to  place  it  accordingly;  or  else  be  will  find 


THE   FALLACIES   IX    WORDS.  317 

himself  entangled  in  words  as  a  bird  in  limetwigs, —  the 
more  he  struggles,  the  moi'e  beliined.  Words  are  wise 
men's  counters, —  they  do  but  i-eckon  by  them;  but  they 
are  the  money  of  fools,  that  value  them  by  the  authority 
of  an  Aristotle,  a  Cicero,  a  Thomas,  or  any  other  doctor 
whatsoever."  Fuller  quaintly  suggests  that  the  reason 
why  the  Schoolmen  wrote  in  so  bald  a  style  was,  "  that 
the  vermin  of  equivocation  might  not  hide  themselves  in 
the  nap  of  their  words."  The  definition  of  words  has  been 
often  regarded  as  a  mere  pedagogue's  exercise;  but  when 
we  call  to  mind  the  persecutions,  proscriptions,  tortures, 
and  even  massacres,  which  have  resulted  from  mistakes 
about  the  meaning  of  certain  words,  the  office  of  the  lexi- 
cographer assumes  a  grave  and  dignified  aspect.  It  is  not 
enough,  however,  in  guarding  against  error,  to  discrimi- 
nate our  words,  so  as  to  understand  their  exact  force.  We 
must  also  keep  constantly  in  mind  the  fact  that  language, 
when  used  with  the  utmost  precision,  is  at  best  but  an 
imperfect  representation  of  thought.  Words  are  properly 
neither  the  "  names  of  things,"  as  modern  writers  have 
defined  them,  nor,  as  tlie  ancients  viewed  them,  the  "pic- 
tures of  ideas."  The  most  they  can  do  is  to  express  the 
irhifioiis  of  things;  they  are,  as  Hobbes  said, '' the  signs 
of  our  conceptions,"  serving  as  a  mark  to  recall  to  our- 
selves the  likeness  of  a  former  thought,  and  as  a  sign  to 
make  it  known  to  others. 

Even  as  the  signs  of  our  conceptions,  the}^  are  at  best 
imperfect  and  unsatisfactory,  representing  only  approxi- 
mately what  we  think,  and  never  coordinating  with  the 
concpptions  they  are  used  to  represent.  "Seizing  on  some 
fliaiMit eristic  mark  of  the  conception,  they  always  express 
too    little    or    too    much.     They    are    sometimes    di^tinctly 


318  words;   their  use  and  abuse. 

metaphorical,  sometimes  indefinitely  assertive;  sometimes 
too  concrete,  sometimes  too  abstract."  Our  sentences  are 
not  images  of  thought,  reflected  in  a  perfect  mirror,  nor 
photographs  which  lack  coloring  only;  they  are  but  the 
merest  skeleton  of  expression,  hints  of  meaning,  tentative 
signs,  vv^hich  can  put  another  only  into  a  partial  possession 
of  our  consciousness.  To  apprehend  perfectly  the  thought 
of  another  man,  even  one  who  uses  language  with  the 
utmost  nicety  and  accuracy,  we  need  to  know  his  individu- 
ality, his  entire  past  history;  we  must  interpret  and  supple- 
ment his  meaning  by  all  that  we  know  of  his  intellectual 
and  moral  constitution,  his  ways  of  thinking,  feeling,  and 
speaking;  we  must  be  en  rapport  with  him;  and  even  then 
we  may  fail  to  penetrate  to  the  central  meaning  of  his 
words,  the  very  core  of  his  thought. 

The  soul  of  every  man  is  a  mystery  which  no  other 
man  can  fathom;  we  are,  as  one  has  said,  spirits  in  prison, 
able  only  to  make  signals  to  each  other,  but  with  a  world 
of  things  to  think  and  say  which  our  signals  cannot  de- 
scribe at  all.  There  is  hardly  an  abstract  term  in  any 
language  which  conveys  precisely  the  same  meaning  to  two 
different  minds;  every  word  is  sure  to  awaken  in  one  mind 
more  or  less  different  associations  from  those  it  awakens 
in  another.  Words  mean  the  same  thing  only  to  persons 
who  are  psychologically  the  same,  and  who  have  had  the 
same  experiences.  It  is  obvious  that  no  word  can  explain 
any  sensation,  pleasant  or  painful,  to  one  who  has  never 
felt  the  sensation.  When  Saunderson,  who  was  born 
blind,  tried  to  define  "  red,"  he  compared  that  color  to  the 
blowing  of  a  trumpet,  or  the  crowing  of  a  cock.  In  like 
manner  Massieu,  the  deaf-mute,  in  trying  to  describe  the 
sound   of  a  trumpet,  said  that  it  was  "  red."     The  state- 


THE    FALLACIES    IN    WOKDS.  319 

ment  that  words  have  to  two  persons  a  common  meaning 
only  when  they  suggest  ideas  of  a  common  experience,  is 
true  even  of  the  terras  we  stop  to  ponder;  how  much  more 
true,  then,  of  words  whose  full  and  exact  meaning  we  no 
more  pause  to  consider,  than  we  reflect  that  the  gold  eagle 
which  passes  through  ou,r  hands  is  a  thousand  cents.  Try 
to  ascertain  the  meaning  of  the  most  familiar  words  whicli 
are  dropping  from  men's  lips,  and  you  find  that  each  has 
its  history,  and  that  many  are  an  epitome  of  the  thoughts 
and  observations  of  ages. 

What  two  persons,  for  example,  attach  the  same  mean- 
ing to  the  words  "democracy,"  "conservatism,"  "radical- 
ism," "education"?  What  is  the  meaning  of  "gentle- 
man," "comfortable,"  "competence"?  De  Quincey  says 
that  he  knew  several  persons  in  England  with  annual  in- 
comes bordering  on  twenty  thousand  pounds,  who  spoke 
of  themselves,  and  seemed  seriously  to  think  themselves, 
"  unhappy  paupei'S."  Lady  Hester  Stanhope,  with  an 
income  of  two  thousand  seven  hundred  pounds  a  year, 
thought  herself  an  absolute  pauper  in  London,  and  went 
to  live  in  the  mountains  of  Syria;  "for  how,  you  know," 
she  would  say  pathetically,  "  could  the  humblest  of  spin- 
sters live  decently  on  that  pittance?"  Do  the  chaste  and 
the  licentious,  the  amiable  and  the  revengeful,  mean  the 
same  thing  when  they  speak  of  "  love"  or  "hate"?  With 
what  precious  meaning  are  the  words  "  home "  and 
"  heaven "  flooded  to  some  persons,  and  with  what  icy 
indiiference  are  they  heard  by  others  ! 

So  imperfect  is  language  that  it  is  doubtful  whether 
such  a  thing  as  a  self-evident  verbal  proposition,  the  abso- 
lute truth  of  wliii'h  can  never  be  contested,  is  possible;  for 
it  can  never  be  absolutely  certain  what  is  the  meaning  of 


320  WORDS;   THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

the  words  in  which  the  proposition  is  expressed,  and  the 
assertion  that  it  is  founded  on  partial  observation,  or  that 
the  words  imperfectly  express  the  observation  on  which  it 
is  founded,  or  are  incomplete  metaphors,  or  are  defective 
in  some  other  respect,  must  always  be  open  to  proof. 

Even  words  that  designate  outward,  material  objects, 
cognizable  by  the  senses,  do  not  always  call  up  similar 
thoughts  in  diiferent  minds.  The  meaning  they  convey 
depends  often  upon  the  mental  qualities  of  the  hearer. 
Thus  the  word  "  sun "  uttered  to  an  unlettered  man  of 
feeble  mental  powers,  conveys  simply  the  idea  of  a  ball 
of  light  and  heat,  which  rises  in  the  sky  in  the  morning, 
and  goes  down  at  evening;  but  to  the  man  of  vivid  imagi- 
nation, who  is  familiar  with  modern  scientific  discoveries, 
it  suggests,  more  or  less  distinctly,  all  that  science  has 
revealed  concerning  that  luminary.  If  we  estimate  words 
according  to  their  etymological  meaning,  we  shall  still 
more  clearly  see  how  inadequate  the}^  are  in  themselves 
to  involve  the  mass  of  facts  which  they  connote, —  as 
inadequate  as  is  a  thin  and  worthless  bit  of  paper,  which 
yet  may  represent  a  thousand  pounds.  In  no  case  is  the 
whole  of  an  object  expressed  or  characterized  by  its  appel- 
lation, but  only  some  salient  feature  or  phenomenon  is 
suggested,  which  is  sometimes  real,  at  others  only  appar- 
ent. Take  the  name  of  an  animal,  and  it  may  probabh^ 
express  some  trivial  fact  about  its  nose  or  its  tail,  as  in 
"  rhinoceros"  we  express  nothing  but  the  horn  in  its  nose, 
and  in  "squirrel"  we  note  only  its  shady  tail;  but  each 
of  these  animals  has  other  important  characteristics,  and 
other  animals  may  have  the  very  characteristics  which 
these  names  import.  The  Latin  word  Homo  means,  ety- 
mologically,    a    creature    made    of    earth,    which    is    but 


THE   FALLACIES   IX    WORDS.  321 

metaphorically  true;  but  for  what  an  infinity,  almost,  of 
complex  conceptions  and  relations  does  it  standi  The  San- 
skrit has  four  names  for  "  elephant,"  from  different  petty 
characteristics  of  the  animal,  and  yet  how  few  of  its  qual- 
ities do  they  describe!  "Take  a  word  expressive  of  the 
smallest  possible  modification  of  matter, —  a  word  invented 
in  the  most  expressive  language  in  the  world,  and  invented 
by  no  less  eminent  a  philosopher  than  Democritus,  and 
that,  too,  with  great  applause, —  the  word  'atom,'  mean- 
ing that  which  cannot  be  cut.  Yet  simple  as  is  the  notion 
to  be  expressed,  and  great  as  wei'e  the  resources  at  com- 
mand, what  a  failure  the  mere  word  is!  It  expresses  too 
much  and  too  little,  too  much  as  being  applicable  to  other 
things,  and  consequently  ambiguous;  too  little,  because  it 
does  not  express  all  the  properties  even  of  an  atom.  Its 
inadequacy  cannot  be  more  forcibly  illustrated  than  by  the 
fact  that  its  precise  Latin  equivalent  is  by  us  confined  to 
the  single  acceptation  '  insect' !  "  * 

But  if  words  are  but  imperfect  symbols  for  designating 
material  objects,  how  much  more  unequal  must  they  be  to 
the  task  of  expressing  that  which  lies  above  and  behind 
matter  and  sensation,  especially  as  all  abstract  terms  are 
metaphors  taken  from  sensible  objects!  How  many  feelings 
do  we  have,  in  the  course  of  our  lives,  which  beggar  descrip- 
tion! How  many  apprehensi-ons,  limitations,  distinctions, 
opinions  are  clearly  present,  at  times,  to  our  consciousness, 
which  elude  every  attempt  to  give  them  verbal  expression! 
Even  the  profoundest  thinkers  and  the  most  accurate,  hair- 
splitting writers,  who  weigh  and  test  to  the  bottom  every 
term  they  use,  are  baffled  in  the  effort  so  to  convey  their 
conclusions   as  to  defy   all    misai)prehension   or  successful 

♦"Chapters  on  Language,"  by  F.  W.  Farrar. 


322  wouns;  tiikik  isi^  axd  ap.use. 

refutation.  Beginning  with  definitions,  they  find  that  the 
definitions  tliemselves  need  defining;  and  just  at  the  tri- 
umphant moment  when  the  structure  of  argument  seems 
complete  and  logic-proof,  some  lynx-eyed  adversary  detects 
an  inaccuracy  or  a  contradiction  in  the  use  of  some  key- 
stone term,  and  the  whole  magnificent  pile,  so  painfully 
reared,  tumbles  into  ruins. 

The  history  of  controversy,  in  short,  in  all  ages  and 
nations,  is  a  history  of  disputes  about  words.  The  hardest 
problems,  the  keenest  negotiations,  the  most  momentous 
decisions,  have  turned  on  the  meaning  of  a  phrase,  a  term, 
or  even  a  particle.  A  misapplied  or  sophistical  expression 
has  provoked  the  fiei-cest  and  most  interminable  quarrels. 
Misnomers  have  turned  the  tide  of  public  opinion;  verbal 
fallacies  have  filled  men's  souls  with  prejudice,  rage,  and 
hate;  and  "the  sparks  of  artful  watchwords,  thrown  among 
combustible  materials,  have  kindled  the  flames  of  deadly 
war  and  changed  the  destiny  of  empires." 


CHAPTER   XIII. 


NAMES   OF   MEN. 


"  Imago  animi,  vultus,  vitae,  nomen  est." 

LVtiide  de8  noms  propres  n'est  point  sans  intJret  pour  la  morale,  I'organi- 
zation  politique,  la  legislation,  et  I'histoire  memc  de  la  civilization. —  Salverte. 

AMONG  the  crotchets  of  Sterne'.s  dialectician,  Walter 
■^  ^  Shandy,  was  a  theory  regarding  the  importance  of 
Christian  names  in  determining  the  future  behavior  and 
destiny  of  the  children  to  whom  they  are  given.  He  sol- 
emnly maintained  the  opinion  that  there  is  a  strange 
kind  of  magic  bias  which  good  or  bad  names,  as  he  called 
them,  irresistibly  impress  upon  men's  character  or  con- 
duct. "  How  many  Caesars  and  Pompeys,"  he  would  say,  "  by 
mere  inspiration  of  their  names,  have  been  rendered  worthy 
of  them?  And  how  many  there  are,"  he  would  add,  "who 
might  have  done  exceedingly  well  in  the  world,  had  not 
their  characters  and  spirits  been  utterly  depressed  and  Nic- 
odemused  into  nothing!"  Of  all  the  names  in  the  universe 
the  one  to  which  the  philosopher  had  the  most  unconquera- 
ble aversion  was  "Tristram."  He  would  break  off  in  the 
midst  of  one  of  his  disputes  on  the  subject  of  names,  and 
demand  of  his  antagonist  whether  he  would  say  he  had 
ever  remembered,  or  whether  he  had  ever  heard  tell  of  a 
man  called  "Tristram"  performing  anything  great  or  worth 
recording.  "No,"  he  would  say;  "  Tristram!  the  thing  is 
impossible." 

In  these  observations  of  Mr.  Shandy  there  may  be  some 

323 


324  WORDS;   TIIEIIl    USE   AND   ABUSE. 

exaggeration,  but  they  contain  substantial  truth.  The 
power  of  names  in  elevating  or  degrading  both  the  things 
and  persons  to  whom  they  are  applied,  is  known  to  all 
thoughtful  observers.  Give  to  a  conscious  being  a  signifi- 
cant and  graphic  appellation,  and  it  tends  to  make  the 
character  gravitate  in  the  direction  of  the*name.  There 
are  names  that  seem  to  act  like  promissory  notes,  which  the 
bearer  does  all  in  his  power  to  redeem  at  maturity;  names 
that  tend  to  verify  themselves  by  swaying  men  foirard  the 
qualities  they  denote,  while  they  too  often  lead  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  others  no  less  important.  It  is  difficult  to  say 
which  is  the  greater  misfortune,  for  a  man  to  have  a  posi- 
tively mean  name,  or  one  that  is  grandiose.  Lord  Lytton, 
in  "  Kenelm  Chillingly,"  speaking  of  the  moral  responsibil- 
ities of  parents  for  the  names  thej  give  their  children, 
regards  as  equally  to  be  deprecated  the  names  which  stamp 
a  child  with  mediocrity,  and  those  which  stamp  him  with  an 
impress  of  absurd  and  overweening  ambition.  Inflict  upon 
a  man,  he  says,  the  burden  of  a  great  name  which  he  must 
utterly  despair  of  equalling,  and  you  crush  him  beneath 
the  weight.  If  a  poet  were  called  John  Milton,  or  William 
Shakespeare,  he  would  not  dare  publish  even  a  sonnet.  On 
the  other  hand,  call  a  child  Peter  Snooks  or  Lazariis  Rust, 
and  though  he  have  the  face  and  form  of  the  god  of  the 
silver  bow,  and  the  eloquence  of  a  Chatham,  he  will  find  it 
hard,  if  not  impossible,  to  achieve  distinction, —  the  name 
will  be  such  a  dead  weight  on  his  intellectual  energies. 
Can  Tabitha  be  a  name  to  conjure  with;  can  Jerusha  be 
musical  on  the  lips  of  love,  or  Higginbotham  fill  the  trump 
of  fame?  Think  of  Washington  having  the  name  of  Jenkins, 
and  toasts  being  drunk  to  the  immortal  Jenkins,  "first  in 
war,  first  in  peace,  and  first  in  the  hearts  of  his  country- 


NAMES   OF   MEN.  325 

men! "  The  true  choice  of  a  name  lies  between  extremes, — 
the  two  extremes  of  ludicrous  insignificance  and  oppressive 
renown.  It  is  questionable  whether  a  good  deal  of  the 
mediocrity  of  the  reigning  families  in  Europe  is  not  due  to 
the  labyrinth  of  names  in  which  the  heir  to  a  throne  is  hid- 
den at  birth,  like  a  moth  in  a  silk  cocoon.  Some  years  ago 
an  infant  prince  of  Saxony  was  enveloped  in  sixteen  names. 
About  forty  years  ago  the  Queen  of  Naples  gave  birth  to  a 
princess  whose  names  numbered  thirty-two,  or  a  dozen 
more  than  the  names  of  Susan  Brown,  of  whom  we  are  told 
that 

"The  patronymical  name  of  the  maid 
Was  so  completely  overlaid 

With  a  lone:  prenomical  cover. 
That  if  each  additional  proper  noun 
Was  laid  by  the  priest  intensively  down, 
Miss  Susan  was  done  uncommonlj'  Brown, 

The  moment  the  christening  was  over!" 

Think  of  an  infant's  being  smothered  for  yeai'S  in  such  a 
superfetation  of  names  as  that  of  the  Neapolitan  princess. 
It  must  require  more  mental  energy  than  many  babies  can 
command,  to  break  one's  way  out  of  such  a  verbal  palace 
prison  as  that. 

^'Xotre  )io))i  propre,''''  says  a  French  writer,  ''''c'est  nous 
memes.'^  The  name  of  a  man  instantly  recalls  him  to 
recollection,  with  his  physical  and  moral  qualities,  and  the 
remarkable  events,  if  any,  in  his  career.  The  few  syllables 
forming  it  "suffice  to  reopen  the  fountain  of  a  bereaved 
mother's  tears;  to  cover  with  blushes  the  face  of  the 
maiden  who  believes  her  secret  about  to  be  revealed;  to 
agitate  the  heart  of  the  lover;  to  light  up  in  the  eyes  of 
an  enemy  the  fire  of  rage,  and  to  awaken  in  the  breast  of 
one  separated  by  distance  from  his  friend  the  liveliest 
emotions  of  hope  or  regret."     What  would  history  or  biog- 


32G  WORDS;  their  usk  and  abuse. 

rapliy  be  without  propei*  names;  or  what  stimulus  would 
men  have,  inciting  them  to  the  performance  of  great 
and  noble  deeds,  if  they  could  not  live  a  second  life  in  their 
names?  Among  most  nations  the  imposition  of  names  has 
been  esteemed  of  such  moment,  that  it  has  been  attended 
with  religious  rites.  The  Jews  accompanied  it  with  cir- 
cumcision ;  the  Greeks  and  Romans  with  religious  ceremo- 
nies and  sacrifices;  the  JPersians,  after  a  religious  service, 
chose  at  a  venture  from  names  written  on  slips  of  paper, 
and  laid  upon  the  Koran;  while  many  Christians  sanctify 
the  rite  by  baptism. 

It  is  a  well  established  fact  that  all  proper  names  were 
originally  significant,  though  in  the  lapse  of  years  the 
meaning  of  many  of  them  has  been  obscured  or  obliter- 
ated. Thus,  the  oldest  known  name,  Adam,  meant  "  red," 
indicating  that  his  body  was  fashioned  from  the  red  earth ; 
while  Moses  signified  "  drawn  from  the  water."  So  the 
fore-names  of  the  Saxons  were  significant, —  as  Alfred, 
"  all  peace  " ;  Biddulpb,  "  the  slayer  of  wolves  " ;  Edmund, 
"truth-mouth,"  or  "the  speaker  of  truth";  Edward, 
"truth-keeper";  Goddard,  "  honored  of  God."  It  is  said 
that  Mr.  Freeman,  the  English  historian,  has  grow-n,  in 
the  course  of  his  studies,  so  in  love  with  the  Old-English 
period,  that  he  has  named  three  of  his  children  Alfred, 
Eadward,  and  ^thelburgh.  According  to  Verstegan,  Will- 
iam was  a  name  not  given  to  children,  but  a  title  of  honor 
given  for  noble  or  worthy  deeds.  When  a  German  had 
killed  a  Roman,  the  golden  helmet  of  the  vanquished  sol- 
dier was  placed  upon  his  head,  and  the  victor  was  honored 
with  the  title  Gildhelm,  or  "golden  helmet," — in  French, 
Guillaume. 

In   the   earlv  ages   of  the  world  a  single  name  sufficed 


NAMES    OF    MEN.  33T 

for  each  person.  It  was  generally  descriptive  of  some 
quality  he  had,  or  which  his  parents  hoped  he  might  in 
future  have.  In  the  course  of  time,  to  distinguish  a  man 
fx-om  others  bearing  the  same  appellative,  a  second  name 
became  necessary.  The  earliest  approach  to  the  modern 
system  of  nomenclature,  was  the  addition  of  the  name  of 
a  man's  son  to  his  own  name;  as  Caleb,  the  son  of 
Jephunneh,  or  Joshua,  the  son  of  Nun, —  a  practice  which 
survives  in  our  own  day  in  such  names  as  Adamson  and 
Fitzherbert.  The  Romans,  to  mark  the  different  (/elites 
and  familice,  and  to  distinguish  individuals  of  the  same 
race,  had  three  names, —  the  Prcenomen,  the  Xomeii,  and 
the  Cognomen.  The  first  denoted  the  individual;  the  sec- 
ond was  the  generic  name,  or  term  of  clanship;  and  the 
third  indicated  the  family.  Military  commanders,  and 
other  persons  of  the  highest  eminence,  sometimes  were 
honored  with  a  fourth  name,  or  Agnomen;  as  Coriolanus, 
Africanus,  Germanicus,  borrowed  from  the  name  of  a  hos- 
tile country,  which  had  been  the  scene  of  their  exploits. 
A  person  Avas  usually  addi'essed  only  by  his  prajnomen, 
which,  Horace  tells  us,  "delicate  ears  loved":  , 

"  Gaiidf  lit  pnenoiuinc  mollcs 
Auriculae.'" 

Archdeacon  Hare  has  well  observed  that  by  means  of  their 
names  political  principles,  political  duties,  political  affec- 
tions were  impressed  on  the  minds  of  the  Romans  from 
their  birth.  Every  member  of  a  great  house  had  a  deter- 
minate course  marked  out  for  him,  the  path  in  which  his 
forefathers  had  trod;  his  name  admonished  him  of  what 
he  owed  to  his  country.  "  i?iert,"  says  Desbrosses,  "  «'a 
contribue  davantuyc  (X  la  grandeur  de  lu  republitjue  que  cctte 
methode  de  succession  nominale,  qui,  incorporant,  pour  ainsi 


328  AvoiiDs;  their  use  and  abuse. 

(lire,  (i  la  gJoire  de  V^tat,  la  (/hire  des  noms  h<fr^ditaires, 
joi(jnit  le  patriotisine  de  race  an  judriotisme  natiomd.'"' 

After  the  conversion  of  Europe  to  Christianity,  the  old 
Pagan  names  were  commonly  discarded,  and  Scriptural 
names,  or  names  derived  from  church  history,  took  their 
place.  About  the  close  of  the  tenth  century,  distinctive 
appellations,  describing  physical  and  moral  qualities,  hab- 
its, professions,  etc.,  were  added  for  the  purpose  of  identi- 
fication; but  as  these  sobriquets  were  imposed  upon  many 
who  bore  the  same  baptismal  names,  an  entire  change  in 
the  system  of  names  became  necessary,  and  hereditary 
surnames  wei'e  adopted.  These,  it  is  said,  were  at  first 
written,  "  not  in  a  direct  line  after  the  Christian  name, 
but  above  it,  between  the  lines,"  and  thus  were  literally 
supra  nomina,  or  "  surnames." 

Our  English  names,  most  of  which  have  originated 
since  the  Norman  Conquest,  are  borrowed,  to  some  extent, 
from  nearly  all  the  races  and  languages  of  the  earth.  The 
Hebrew  is  represented  in  Ben,  which  means  "  son,"  and  the 
Syriac  in  Bar,  as  in  Barron  and  Bartholomew.  The  desire 
to  disguise  Old  Testament  names  has  shortened  Abraham 
into  "  Braham,"  and  Moses  into  "  Mosely  "  or  "  Moss."  In 
like  manner  Solomon  becomes  *'Sloman";  Levi,  "Lewis"; 
and  Elias,  "  Ellis." 

The  three  most  common  patronymics  of  Celtic  origin, 
now  used  by  the  English,  are  0,  Mac,  and  Aj).  The  High- 
landers of  Scotland  employed  the  sire-name  with  Mac,  and 
hence  the  Macdonalds  and  Mac  Gregors,  meaning  "  the  son 
of  Donald  "  and  "  the  son  of  Gregor."  The  Irish  used  the 
prefix  of  Oy  or  0,  signifying  grandson;  as,  0"Hara, 
O'Neale.  They  use  the  word  Mac  also;  and  the  two 
names  together  are  so   essential    notes    of   the  Irish,  that 


NAMES    OF    MEN".  329 

"Per  Mac  atqiic  O,  tu  veros  cognoscis  Ilibcrnosi, 
His  duobus  adeniptis,  nulliis  Hibernus  adest." 

Mr.  Lower,  in  his  interesting  work  on  personal  names,* 
states  that  among  the  archives  of  the  corporation  of  Gal- 
way,  there  is  an  order  dated  1518,  declaring  that  "neither 
0  ne  Mac  shoulde  strutte  ne  swagger  through  the  streetes 
of  Galway." 

The  old  Normans  prefixed  to  their  names  the  word  Fitz 
a  corruption  of  /f'/.s,  derived  from  the  Latin y/////s;  as  Fitz- 
William,  "  the  son  of  William."  Camden  states  that  there 
is  not  a  village  in  Normandy  that  has  not  surnamed  some 
family  in  England.  The  French  names  thus  introduced 
from  Normandy  may  generally  be  known  by  the  prefixes 
De,  Dii,  De  la,  St.,  and  by  the  suffixes  Font,  Beau,  Age,  Mont, 
Bois,  Champ,  ViJIe,  etc.,  most  of  which  are  parts  of  the 
proper  names  of  places;  as  De  Mortimer,  St.  Maure  (Sey- 
mour), Montfort,  etc.  The  Russian  peasantry  employ  the 
termination  iritz,  and  the  Poles  sJ:>/  in  the  same  sense;  as 
Peter  Paulowitz,  "  Peter,  the  son  of  Paul,"  and  James 
Petrowsky,  "  James,  the  son  of  Peter." 

In  Wales,  till  a  late  period,  no  surnames  were  used, 
except  Ap,  or  Son;  as  Ap  Richard,  now  corrupted  into 
Prichard;  Ap  Owen,  now  Bowen;  Ap  Roderick,  now  Brod- 
erick  and  Brodie.  Not  over  a  century  has  passed  since 
one  might  have  heard  in  Wales  of  such  "yard-long-tailed" 
combinations  as  Evan-ap-Griffith-ap-David-ap  Jenken,  and 
so  on  to  the  seventh  or  eighth  generation,  the  individual 
carrying  his  pedigree  in  his  name.*  To  ridicule  this 
absurd  species  of  nomenclature,  a  wag  of  the  seventeenth 
century  described  cheese  as  being 

♦  "An  Essay  on  English  Surnames,"  by  Murk  Antony  Lower,  M.A., 
F.S.  A.,  a  work  full  of  interesting  infunuation  on  Ihu  subject  of  which  it  treats, 
and  to  which  1  uni  iiiiicli  indebted. 


330  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

"Adam's  own  couBin-german  by  its  birth, 
Ap-Curds-ap-Milli-ap-Covv-ap-Grass-ap-Earthl" 

Mr.  Lower  says  that  tlie  following  anecdote  was  related  to 
him  by  a  native  of  Wales:  An  Englishman  riding  one 
dark  night  among  the  mountains,  heard  a  cry  of  distress, 
uttered  apparently  by  a  man  who  had  fallen  into  a  ravine 
near  the  highway,  and,  on  listening  more  attentively, 
heard  the  words:  "Help,  master,  help!"  in  a  voice  truly 
Cambrian.  "Help!  what,  who  are  you?"  inquired  the 
traveller.  "  Jenkin-ap-Griffith-ap-Robin-ap-William-ap- 
Rees-ap-Evan,"  was  the  reply.  "  Lazy  fellows  that  ye  be," 
rejoined  the  Englishman,  putting  spurs  to  his  hoi'se,  "to 
lie  rolling  in  that  hole,  half  a  dozen  of  ye;  why,  in  the 
name  of  common  sense,  don't  ye  helj)  one  another  out?'''' 

In  the  twelfth  century  it  was  considered  a  mark  of  dis- 
grace to  have  no  surname.  A  wealthy  heiress  is  repre- 
sented as  saying  in  respect  to  her  suitor,  Robert,  natural 
son  of  King  Henry  I,  who  had  but  one  name: 

"It  were  to  me  a  great  shame, 
To  have  a  lord  withouten  his  twa  name;" 

whereupon  the  King,  to  remedy  the  fatal  defect,  gave  him 
the  surname  of  Fitz-Roy. 

The  early  Saxons  had  as  a  rule  but  one  name,  which 
was  always  significant  of  some  outward  or  other  peculiarity, 
and  was  doubtless  often  given  to  children  with  the  belief 
or  hope  that  the  meaning  of  the  word  might  exert  some 
mysterious  influence  on  the  bearer's  future  destiny.  Ere 
long,  however,  surnames  came  into  fashion  with  them,  too, 
and  were  derived  from  the  endless  variety  of  personal 
qualities,  natural  objects,  occupations  and  pursuits,  social 
relations,  localities,  offices,  and  even  from  diff"erent  parts  of 
the  body  (as  Cheek,  Beard,  Shanks),  from  sports  (as  Ball, 


NAMES   OF   MEN.  331 

Bowles,  Whist,  Fairplay),  from  measures  (as  Gill,  Peck), 
and  from  diseases  (as  Cramp,  Toothacher,  Akenside),  from  a 
conjunction  (as  And),  and  from  coins  (as  Penny,  Twopenny, 
Moneypenny,  Grote,  Pound).  On  a  person  with  the  first  of 
these  pecuniary  names,  the  following  epitaph  was  written: 

"Reader,  if  cash  thou  art  in  want  of  any. 
Dig  four  feet  deep,  and  thou  chalt  find  a  Penny." 

The  prefix  atte  or  nt  softened  to  a  or  an  has  helped  to 
form  many  names.  A  man  living  on  a  moor  would  call 
himself  Attemoor  or  Atmoor;  if  near  a  gate,  Attegate  or 
Agate.  John  Atten  Oak  was  oftentimes  condensed  into 
John-a-Noke,  and  then  into  John  Noaks.  Nye  is  thus  a 
corruption  of  Atten-Eye,  "  at  the  island."  From  Apple- 
garth,  "  an  orchard,"  are  derived  Applegate  and  Appleton. 
Beckett  means  literally  "a  little  brook";  Chase,  "a  for- 
est"; Cobb,  "a  harbor";  Craig,  "a  rock"  or  "precipice"; 
Holme  and  Holmes,  "a  meadow  surrounded  with  water"; 
Holt,  "a  grove";  Holloway,  "  a  deep  road  between  high 
banks";  Lee  and  Leigh,  "a  pasture";  Peel,  "a  pool"; 
Slack,  "  low  ground,"  or  "  a  pass  between  mountains."  The 
root  of  the  ubiquitous  Smith  is  sniitan,  "  to  smite,"  and  like 
the  hsitin  faber,  the  name  was  originally  given  to  all  "  smit- 
ers,"  whether  workers  in  wood  or  workers  in  metal.  Soldiers 
were  sometimes  called  War-Smiths.  Among  all  the  forty 
thousand  English  surnames,  no  one  has  been  more  prolific 
of  jests  and  witticisms,  especially  John  Smith,  which,  from 
its  commonness,  is  practically  no  name,  though  the  rural 
Englishman  seems  to  have  thought  otherwise,  who  directed 
a  letter,  "  P'or  Mr.  John  Smith,  London, —  with  spead." 
As  there  are  hundreds  of  John  Smiths  in  the  London 
Directory,  the  letter  might  as  well  have  been  addressed  to 
the  Man  in  the  Moon.     There  is  a  well  known  story  of  d, 


332  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

wag  at  a  crowded  theatre,  who  secured  a  seat  by  shouting 
"  Mr.  Smith's  house  is  on  fire!" 

Many  words  obsolete  in  English  are  preserved  in  sur- 
names; as  Sutor,  which  is  the  Latin  and  Saxon  for  "shoe- 
maker;" Latimer,  from  Latiner,  " a  writer  of  Latin;" 
Chaucer,  from  cJiansier,  "a  hose-maker";  Lorimer,  "a 
maker  of  spurs,  and  bits  for  bridles."  An  Arkwright  was 
"a  maker  of  meal-chests";  Lander  is  from  Jaiandier,  "a 
washerwoman";  Banister,  is  "a  keeper  of  the  Bath"; 
Crocker,  "  a  potter  ";  Shearman,  "  one  who  shears  worsteds, 
etc.";  Sanger,  "a  singer";  Notman,  "a  cowherd."  Gener- 
ally all  names  ending  in  er  indicate  some  employment  or 
profession.  Such  names  as  Baxter  and  Brewster  are  the 
feminine  of  Baker  and  Brewer,  as  is  Webster  of  Webber,  or 
"  weaver,"  which  shows  that  these  trades  were  anciently 
carried  on  by  women,  and  that  when  men  began  to  follow 
them,  they  retained  for  some  time  the  feminine  names,  as  do 
men-milliners  now.  The  name  of  the  poet  Whittier,  how- 
ever, is  a  corruption  of  "  White  church."  The  termination 
ward  indicates  "a  keeper";  as  Hay  ward,  "  keeper  of  the 
town  cattle";  W^oodward,  " forest-keeper."  Rush  is  "sub- 
tle"; Bonner,  "kind";  Eldridge,  "  wild,"  "ghastly."  Nu- 
merous surnames  are  derived  from  the  chase,  showing  the 
passion  of  the  early  English  for  field-sports;  as  Bowyer, 
Fowler,  Fletcher  (from  the  French  fecJie,  an  arrow),  Hart- 
man.  Tod  is  the  Scotch  word  for  fox  ;  hence  Todhunter 
(the  name  of  a  celebrated  mathematician  who  died  recently 
at  Cambridge,  Eng.)  is  "  a  fox-hunter."  Among  the  names 
derived  from  offices  are  Chalmers,  "a  chamberlain;"  Fos- 
ter, "a  nourisher,"  one  who  had  care  of  the  children  of 
great  men;  and  Franklin,  a  person  next  in  dignit}-  to  an 
esquire.     Palmer  comes  from  the  professional  wanderer  of 


KAMES   OF   MEN.  333 

the  ancient  time,  who  always  carried  a  pahn-hra.nch  as  a 
pledge  of  his  having  visited  the  Holy  Land.  Landseer  was 
a  '"land-steward,"  or  bailiff. 

Some  names,  denoting  mean  occupations  which  onW 
bondmen  would  follow,  have  been  disguised  by  a  new  or- 
thography, "  mollified  ridiculously,"  as  Camden  says,  "  lest 
their  bearers  should  seem  vilified  by  them."  Carter,  Tailor, 
and  Smith  have  been  metamorphosed  into  Carteer,  Tayleure, 
Smyth,  Smeeth,  or  Smythe.  Mr.  Hayward,  ashamed  of 
being  called  "cattle-keeper,"  has  transformed  himself  into 
Howard,  as  if  he  hoped  to  smuggle  himself  among  the  con- 
nections of  the  greatest  of  ducal  houses.  Dean  Swift,  speak- 
ing of  these  devices  to  change  the  vulgar  into  the  genteel 
by  the  change  of  a  letter,  says:  "  I  know  a  citizen  who  adds 
or  alters  a  letter  in  his  name  with  every  plum  he  acquires; 
he  now  wants  only  the  change  of  a  vowel  to  be  allied  to  a 
sovereign  prince,  Farnese,  in  Italy,  and  that  perhaps  he  may 
contrive  to  be  done  by  a  mistake  of  the  graver  upon  his 
tombstone."  Mr.  Lower  tells  a  good  story  of  a  Tailor  who 
had  been  thus  dignified,  and  who  haughtily  demanded  of  a 
farmer  the  name  of  his  dog.  The  answer  was:  "  Why,  sir, 
his  proper  name  is  Jowler,  but  since  he's  a  consequential 
kind  of  puppy,  we  calls  him  Jowleure!  " 

Of  the  Saxon  patronymics  the  most  fruitful  is  sou,  with 
which  is  mingled  inseparably  the  genitive  letter  s.  Thus 
from  the  Christian  name  AfJain  are  derived  Adams,  Adam- 
son,  Addison;  from  AiitJrr/r,  Andrews,  Anderson;  from 
Dennis,  Dennison,  .lennison;  from  Ifpnnj.  Henrison,  Harris, 
Harrison,  Hawes,  Hawkins;  from  John,  .Tohns,  Jones,  .Jon- 
son,  Johnson,  Jennings,  Jenks,  Jenkinson,  Jackson,  Jockins; 
from  WiUiam,  Williamson,  Williams,  Wilson,  Wills.  Wil- 
kins,    Wilkinson,    Wells;     from    Walter,   Watson,    Watts, 


334  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

Watkins.  From  the  Old  Saxon  derivation  {»(/,  signifying 
offspring,  it  is  said  that  we  get  over  two  thousand  proper 
names,  drowning  and  Whiting  are  dark  and  white  oft'- 
spring.  The  termination  kin,  derived  from  the  ancient  cijii, 
meaning  "  race,"  is  found  in  a  yet  greater  number  of 
names;  while  from  the  termination  ode  (as  in  Pollock, 
from  Paul,  and  contracted  into  Polk)  are  obtained  compar- 
atively few  names.  Scandinavian  mythology  has  contrib- 
uted a  few  names  to  our  English  list.  From  TJior  we  have 
Thoresby,  Thursby,  and  Thurlow. 

Among  the  surnames  derived  from  personal  qualities, 
we  have  Russell,  "  red  ";  Gough,  also  "  red  ";  Snell,  "  agile  " 
or  "  hardy  ";  Read,  Reid,  or  Reed,  an  old  spelling  of  "  red  "; 
Duff,  "black";  Yaughan,  "little";  Longfellow,  Moody, 
Goodenough,  Toogood,  and  hundreds  of  others,  Farebrother 
is  a  Scottish  name  for  "  uncle";  Waller  means  a  "  pilgrim," 
or  "  stranger."  Of  Puritan  surnames  derived  from  the  vir- 
tues, Be-courteous  Cole,  Search-the-Scriptures  Moreton, 
Fly-fornication  Richardson,  Kill-sin  Pemble,  Fight-the- 
good-fight-of-faith  Wliite,  are  examples.  Surnames  have 
even  been  derived  from  oaths,  and  other  such  exclamations. 
Profane  swearing  was  a  common  vice  in  the  early  times, 
and  when  men  habitually  interlarded  their  conversations 
with  oaths,  they  became  sobriquets  by  which  they  were 
known.  Just  as  Say-Sa}^  became  the  title  of  an  old  gentle- 
man who  always  began  a  remark  with  "  I  say-say,  old  boy," 
so  a  profane  exclamation,  repeatedly  uttered,  became  a 
proper  name.  Godkin,  Blood,  and  Sacre  are  said  to  be 
clipped  oaths.  Parsall  is  corrupted  from  Par  Ciel,  "  By 
Heaven,"  Pardoe  from  Par  Dieii,  and  Godsall  and  Godbody 
from  "  By  the  soul  and  body  of  God!"  the  shocking  but 
favorite  oath  of  Edward  III. 


NAMES    OF    MEN.  335 

There  are  names  which  in  the  social  circle  will  provoke 
a  smile,  in  spite  of  every  attempt  to  preserve  one's  gravity; 
others  that  excite  horror,  hate,  or  contempt;  and  others 
which,  inviting  cheap  puns  and  gibes,  irritate  the  minds 
of  the  calmest  men.  Shenstone  thanked  God  that  his  name' 
was  not  liable  to  a  pun.  There  is  a  large  class  of  names 
indicative  of  i^ei'sonal  blemishes  or  moral  obliquities,  such 
as  Asse,  Goose,  Lazy,  Leatherhead,  Addlehead,  Milksop, 
Mudd,  Pighead,  Trollope,  Hussey,  Silliman,  Cruickshank, 
Blackmonster,  etc.  In  many  countries  Devil  is  a  surname. 
Kennard,  once  Kaynard,  means  "you  dog,"  also  a  "rascal." 
The  Romans  had  their  Plauti,  Pandi,  Vari,  and  Scauri, 
that  is,  the  Splay-foots,  the  Bandy-legs,  the  In-knees,  and 
the  Club-foots.  Codes  means  "  one-ej-ed" ;  Flaccus,  one  of 
the  names  of  Horace,  "flap-eared";  and  Naso  points  to  a 
long  "  nose."  Caesar,  from  whose  name  come  the  German 
Kaiser  and  the  Russian  Czar,  was  so  called  (or,  at  least,  the 
first  Roman  with  the  name  was  so  called)  from  his  coming 
into  the  world  with  long  hair  {ccesaries),  or  from  his  un- 
natural mode  of  birth  [a  c^so  ninfris  iitrro).  Who  would 
introduce  Mr.  Shakelady  into  the  circle  of  his  friends,  and 
what  worthy  deeds  could  be  expected  from  a  Doolittle? 
Who  can  blame  Dr.  Jacob  Quackenboss  for  dropping  a 
couple  of  syllables  and  the  quack  at  the  same  time  from 
his  name,  and  becoming  Jacob  Bush,  M.D.?  W^ho  can  help 
sympathizing  with  Mr.  Death,  who  asked  the  Legislature  of 
Massachusetts  to  change  his  name  to  one  less  sepulchral; 
or  with  Mr.  Wormwood,  who  petitioned  for  liberty  to 
assume  the  name  of  Washington,  declaring  that  the  intense 
sufferings  of  so  many  years  of  wormwood  existence  deserved 
the  compensation  of  a  great  and  glorious  name?  Louis 
XI  was  less  justified  in  changing  the  name  of  his  barber, 


330  words;   xnEiR  use  axd  abuse. 

Olivier  le  Diable,  into  Olivier  le  Mauvais,  then  to  Olivier  le 
Ma] in,  and  then  into  Olivier  le  Daim,  at  the  same  time  for- 
bidding his  former  names  ever  to  be  mentioned.  On  the  other 
hiind,  the  ill-omened  name  of  Maria  Theresa's  noble  min- 
'ister,  Thunic'htgut,  "Do-no-good,"  was  rightfully  changed 
by  the  Empress  into  Thugut,  "  Do-good."  The  original 
name  of  the  great  French  writer,  Balzac,  was  Guez,  "a 
beggar."  Men  who  inherit  names  originally  given  in 
contempt  and  scorn  have  this  compensation,  that,  as  many 
a  hump-backed  and  ugly-looking  man  has  found  in  his 
deformit}^  "  a  perpetual  spur  to  rescue  and  deliver  him 
from  scoi'n,"  so  the  inheritors  of  mean  or  degrading  names 
are  provoked  and  stimulated,  as  we  see  in  the  case  of 
Brutus,  "  stupid,"  to  redeem  them  from  their  degradation 
by  noble  deeds,  and  make  them  for  centuries  the  watch- 
words of  humanit}'. 

The  dislike  to  vulgar  and  cacophonous  names  led  some 
scholars  and  othei'S,  at  an  early  period,  to  adopt  Greek  or 
Latin  forms.  The  native  name  of  Erasmus  was  Gherserd 
Gherserds.  The  root  of  Gherserd  is  a  verb  meaning  "to 
desire,"  and  so  the  great  scholar  Latinized  his  Christian 
name  into  Desiderius,  and  Gra^oized  his  surname  into  Eras- 
mus, both  signifying  the  same  thing.  The  name  of  Luther's 
friend,  the  celebrated  theologian  and  reformer.  Melanch- 
thon,  is  a  translation  of  the  German  Schwarzerde,  or 
"Black  Earth." 

Considering  the  great  variety  of  English  proper  names, — 
representing,  as  they  do,  nearly  all  the  nationalities  of 
Europe, —  it  is  not  strange  that  they  have  suffered  much 
from  corruption.  The  causes  of  this  cori-uption  have  been 
the  wear  and  tear  of  time  and  usage;  the  repetition  of 
foreign  sounds  by  alien  lips;    the  falling  of  those  sounds 


NAMES    OF    MEN.  337 

upon  a  dull  or  deafened  ear;  their  disguisement  by  too 
thick  or  too  thin  an  utterance;  incorrect  spelling;  the 
practice  of  pronouncing  the  words  as  they  were  written; 
and  the  fluctuations  of  orthography.  Many  Norman  names 
have  been  so  mutilated,  that  their  owners,  if  they  could 
see  them,  would  find  them  unintelligible.  Thus  we  have 
Darcy  from  Adrecy,  Boswell  from  Bosseville,  Loring  from 
Lorraine,  and  Taille-bois  has  been  changed  into  Tallboys! 
Paganus  became  first  Painim,  and  then  Payne.  But  the 
most  unhappy  victims  of  this  corrupting  tendency  were 
four  Normans,  whose  names  were  anglicized  from  honor- 
able into  the  most  ill-omened  and  repulsive  appellations. 
One,  called  De  Ath,  became  Death;  another,  De-Ville,  was 
transformed  into  a  Devil;  and  the  third,  Scardeville,  is  now 
Skarfield,  and  —  Jiorresco  referens  —  Scaredevil! 

It  is  natural  to  suppose  that  all  families  bearing  English 
names  are  of  English  extraction ;  but  there  are  examples 
of  the  contrary.  The  descendant  of  a  German  family, 
whose  name  in  the  Old  World  was  Brllckenbauer,  calls 
himself  in  this  country  Bridgebuilder.  A  German  called 
Fcuerstein  ('"  firestone,"  or  "flint"),  having  settled  among  a 
French  population  in  the  West,  changed  his  name  to 
Pierre  a  Fusil;  but,  the  Anglo-American  population  be- 
coming after  a  while  the  leading  one,  Pierre  a  Fusil  was 
transformed  into  the  pithy  Peter  Gun ! 

Mr.  Lower  gives  an  interesting  account  of  the  origin  of 
certain  famous  historical  names.  The  name  of  Fortescue 
was  bestowed  on  Sir  Iiiclnnd  le  Forte,  a  leader  in  the 
Conqueror's  army,  because  he  protected  his  chief  at  the 
battle  of  Hastings  by  bearing  before  him  a  massive  escii, 
or  shield.  Tiie  name  of  Lockliart  was  originally  given  to 
a  follower  uf  Lurd  Douglas,  who  acconipanicd  him  to  the 


338  WORDS;  their  use  and  abuse. 

Holy  Land  with  the  heart  of  King  Robert  Bruce.  Hence 
some  of  the  family  bear  a  padlock  enclosing  a  heart  in 
their  arms.  The  illustrious  surname  of  Plantagenet,  borne 
by  eight  kings  of  England,  originally  belonged  to  Fulke, 
the  Count  of  Anjou,  in  the  twelfth  century.  To  expiate 
certain  flagrant  crimes  of  which  he  had  been  guilty,  he 
went  on  a  pilgrimage  to  Jerusalem,  and  wore  in  his  cap, 
as  a  mark  of  humility,  a  planta  genista,  or  "  broom-plant," 
and  hence  was  surnamed  Plantagenet.  Another  version 
of  the  story  is  that  he  suffered  himself  to  be  beaten  with 
''hvoom-ivf i^^^,'' plantaganansice.  The  Scottish  name.  Turn- 
bull,  is  said  to  have  been  given  to  a  strong  man,  one 
Ruel,  who  "turned"  by  the  head,  a  wild  "bull"  which  ran 
violently  against  King  Robert  Bruce  in  Stirling  Park. 
The  celebrated  and  numerous  Scottish  family  of  Arm- 
strong derive  their  surname  from  an  ancestor  who  was 
an  armor-bearer,  and  by  whom  an  ancient  King  of  Scot- 
land was  remounted,  after  his  horse  had  been  killed  under 
him  in  battle.  The  Halidays  were  named  from  their 
war  cry,  "A  holy  day";  every  day  being  hoi}',  in  their 
estimation,  that  was  spent  in  ravaging  the  enemy's  coun- 
try. A  poor  child,  picked  up  at  Newark-upon-Trent,  was 
called  by  the  inhabitants  Tom  Among  Us.  Becoming 
eminent,  he  was  employed  in  several  embassies,  and 
changed  his  name  to  the  dignified  one  of  Dr.  Thomas 
Magnus.  Though  the  earliest  names  were  short  and 
simple,  3-et  there  appears  to  have  prevailed,  even  in  the 
olden  times,  a  taste  for  long  and  sounding  names.  In  a 
note  to  Coleridge's  "Literary  Biography,"  mention  is  nuide 
of  an  author  whose  name  is  of  fearful  length. —  Abul 
Waled  Mohammed  Ebn  Ashmed  Ebn  Mohammed  Ebn  Ras- 
chid.     Think  of  the  time  wasted  in  speaking  and  writing 


NAMES   OF    MEN.  339 

such  an  appellation,  which,  unless  he  was  hlessed  with  a 
very  tenacious  memory,  its  owner  himself  must  have  been 
sometimes  puzzled  to  recollect!  The  polytitled  Arab, 
whose  name  thus  "drags,  like  a  wounded  snake,  its  slow 
length  along,"  was  born  at  Corinth  about  1150,  and  died  in 
Morocco  in  1206.  The  Spaniards  have  been  noted,  beyond 
all  other  peoples,  for  a  passion  for  voluminous  and  digni- 
fied names;  and  to  enlarge  them,  they  often  add  their 
places  of  residence.  This  is  amusingly  illustrated  by  a 
story  told  by  Fuller  in  his  "  Worthies."  A  rich  citizen,  of 
the  name  of  John  Cuts,  was  ordered  by  Queen  Elizabeth 
to  receive  and  entertain  the  Spanish  ambassador;  but  the 
don  was  greatly  displeased,  feeling  that  he  was  disparaged 
by  being  placed  with  a  man  whose  name  was  so  ridicu- 
lously short,  and  who,  consequently,  could  never  have 
achieved  anything  great  or  honorable;  but  when  he 
found  that  the  hospitality  of  his  host  had  nothing  mono- 
syllabic about  it,  but  more  than  made  up  for  the  brevity 
of  his  name,  he  was  reconciled.  Lucian  tells  of  one 
Simon,  who,  coming  to  a  considerable  fortune,  aggran- 
dized bis  name  to  Simonides.  Diodes,  becoming  emperor, 
lengthened  his  name  to  Dioclesian;  and  Bruna,  Queen  of 
France,  tried  to  give  regal  pomp  to  her  name  by  trans- 
forming it  to  Brunehault. 

Oddities,  eccentricities,  and  happy  accidents  of  names 
are  common  to  all  languages,  and  open  a  wide  field  of 
playful  speculation  and  research.  What  queer  yet  felici- 
tous conjunctions  are  Preserved  Fish,  Virginia  Weed, 
Dunn  Browne,  Mahogany  Coffin,  and  Return  Swift?  Es- 
pecially remarkable  is  the  extent  to  which  the  occupations 
of  men  harmonize  with  their  surnames.  In  London,  Gin 
&   Ginman,    and    Alehouse   are    publicans.     Portwine  and 


340  "worjDs;  THEIR  rsi-:  and  AursE, 

Negus  are  licensed  victuallers,  one  in  Westminster,  the 
other  in  Bishopsgate  street.  Seaman  is  the  host  of  the 
Ship  Hotel,  and  A.  King  keeps  the  Crown  and  Sceptre. 
Pye  is  a  pastry  cook,  and  Fitall  and  Treadavvay  are  shoe- 
makers. Mr.  Weinmann  sells  sherries,  madeiras,  etc.,  in 
Chicago,  and  Mr.  Silverman  is  a  noted  banker.  It  is  a 
striking  fact  that  Mr.  Loud  and  Mr.  Thunder  were,  some 
years  ago,  both  organists  in  the  same  American  town;  and 
we  must  acknowledge  that  few  names  could  harmonize 
better,  or  accord  more  happily  with  the  double  diapason 
and  the  swell  to  which  their  professional  duties  accus- 
tomed them.  What  name  could  be  more  picturesque  for 
a  pot-boy  than  Corker,  for  a  dentist  than  Tugwell,  or  for 
an  editor  of  "Punch"  than  Mark  Lemon?  What  hap- 
pier appellation  for  the  owner  of  a  line  of  stage-coachea 
than  Jehu  Golightly,  the  name  of  a  southern  proprietor, 
which  the  incredulous  passenger  refused  to  believe  acci- 
dental? 

Sometimes  the  name  harmonizes  ill  with,  or  is  posi- 
tively antagonistic  to,  the  occupation  or  character.  The 
amiable  and  witty  banker-poet,  Horace  Smith,  even 
declares  that  "  surnames  ever  go  by  contraries,"  and,  as 
proof,  says: 

"Mr.  Barker's  as  mute  as  a  fish  in  the  sea, 

Mr.  Miles  never  moves  on  a  journey, 

Mr.  Go-to-bed  sits  up  till  half-past  three, 

Mr.  Makepeace  was  bred  an  attorney. 

Mr.  Gardener  can't  tell  a  flower  from  a  root, 

Mr.  Wild  with  timidity  draws  back; 
Mr.  Rider  performs  all  his  travels  on  foot, 

Mr.  Foote  all  his  journeys  on  horseback." 

Ward  and  Lock,  who  should  sell  bank  safes,  are  book 
publishers.  Neal  and  Pray  was  the  title  of  a  house  in 
New  England,  that  was  by  no  means  given   to  devotion. 


NAMES    OF    MEN.  3tl 

Butcher,  Death,  Slaughter,  Churchyard,  and  Coffin  were 
the  names  of  so  many  London  surgeons  and  apothecaries. 
Partnerships  often  show  a  curious  conjunction  of  names;  as 
Lamb  «fc  Hare,  Holland  &  Sherry,  Carpenter  k  Wood,  Spin- 
age  &  Lamb,  Flint  k  Steel,  Foot  Sc  Stocking,  hosiers, 
Rumfit  &  Cutwell,  tailors,  Robb  «fc  Steel,  and,  above  all,  L 
Ketchum  &  U.  Cheatham,  the  immortal  names  of  two  New 
York  brokers.  Not  only  business  but  liymeneal  partner- 
ships reveal  some  singular  combinations;  as  when  Mr. 
Good  marries  Miss  Evil,  when  George  Virtue  is  united  to 
Susan  Vice,  and  when  Benjamin  Bird,  aged  sixty,  is  wedded 
to  Julia  Chafif,  aged  twenty,  showing  that,  in  spite  of  the 
old  saw,  "  an  old  bird "  may  be  "  caught  by  chaff." 

Punning  upon  names  has  always  been  a  favorite  amuse- 
ment with  those 

"Who  think  it  legitimate  fun 
To  be  blazing  away  at  every  one 
With  a  regular  doubk'-loaded  gun." 

When  the  defender  of  a  certain  extortioner,  whom  Lutatius 
Catulus  accused,  attempted  by  a  sarcasm  to  disconcert  his 
vehement  adversary,  saying,  "  Why  do  you  bark,  little 
dog?"  ('■  Quid  Ultras,  Catule  ?")  "Because  I  saw  a  thief," 
retorted  Catulus.  Shakespeare  makes  Falstaff  play  upon 
his  swaggering  ancient's  name,  telling  Pistol  he  will  double 
charge  him  with  sack,  or  dismissing  him  with — "No  more, 
Pistol;  I  would  not  have  you  go  off  here;  discharge  your- 
self of  our  company,  Pistol."  W^hen  a  man  named  Silver 
was  arraigned  before  Sir  Thomas  More,  he  said:  ^^  Siltrr, 
you  must  he  tried  hij  Jire.'"  "Yes,"  replied  the  prisoner, 
"  but  you  know,  my  lord,  that  Quick  Silver  cannot  abide 
the  fire."  The  man's  wit  procured  his  discharge.  An  old 
gentleman   by  the  name  of  Gould,  having  married   a  very 


342  WORDS;   their  use  and  abuse. 

young  wife,  wrote  to  a  friend  informing  him  of  his  good 
fortune,  concluding  with 

"So  you  see,  my  dear  sir,  though  I'm  eighty  years  old 
A  girl  of  eighteen  is  in  love  with  old  Gould." 

To  this  his  friend  replied: 

"A  girl  of  eighteen  may  love,  it  is  true, 
But  believe  me,  dear  sir,  it  is  Gold  without  U." 

When  a  Bishop  Goodenough  was  appointed  to  his  office, 
a  certain  dignitary  who  had  hoped,  but  failed,  to  get  the 
appointment,  was  asked  the  secret  of  his  disappointment, 
and  replied:  "  Because  I  was  not  Goodenough." 

Fuller,  in  his  "  Grave  Thoughts,"  tells  an  anecdote 
which  shows  that  where  the  punning  propensity  exists, 
no  occasion  or  subject,  however  solemn,  will  prevent  it 
fi'om  finding  expression  :  "  When  worthy  Master  Hern, 
famous  for  his  living,  preaching,  and  writing,  lay  on  his 
deathbed  (rich  only  in  goodness  and  children),  his  wife 
made  such  womanish  lamentations,  what  should  become 
of  her  little  ones?  'Peace!  sweet-heart,'  said  he;  'that  God 
who  feedeth  the  ravens  will  not  starve  the  herns;'  a  speech 
censured  as  light  by  some,  observed  by  others  as  prophet- 
ical; as  indeed  it  came  to  pass  that  they  were  all  well 
disposed  of."  It  is  said  that  John  Huss,  when  burning  at 
the  stake,  fixed  his  eyes  steadfastly  upon  the  spectators, 
and  said  with  much  solemnity:  " They  burn  a  goose,  hut 
in  a  hundred  years  a  swan  will  arise  out  of  the  ashes;" 
words  which  many  years  afterward  were  regarded  as 
predicting  the  great  Protestant  reformer, —  Huss  signifying 
"a  goose,"  and  Luther,  "a  swan." 

There  are  occasions,  however,  when,  as  Sir  William 
F.  Napier  once  wrote  to  a  friend,  in  excusing  himself  for 
making  some  bad  puns,  "  a  bitter  feeling  turns  to  humor 


NAMES    OF    ME>r.  343 

to  avoid  cursing;"  and  it  is  certain  that  it  was  from  no 
desire  to  display  his  wit,  that  yEschylus  devoted  twelve 
lines  of  "a  splendid  and  passionate  chorus"  to  a  denun- 
ciation of 

"Sweet  rielen, 
Hell  in  her  name,  but  Heaven  in  her  looks." 

Even  Dr.  Johnson,  a  professed  hater  of  puns,  could  not 
resist  the  temptation,  when  introduced  to  Mrs.  Barbauld, 
of  growling,  ''Bare-bald!  why,  that's  the  very  2-)leonasm  of 
baldness!'^ 

At  the  beginning  of  this  chapter  some  remarks  were 
made  on  the  names  of  children,  and  with  a  few  words 
further  on  the  same  theme  I  will  end.  Too  often  the  boy 
or  girl  is  named  after  the  father  or  mother,  taking  the 
names,  however  ugly,  ill-sounding,  or  uneuphonious,  that 
have  been  handed  down  in  the  family  from  generation  to 
generation,  without  a  thought  of  the  cruelty  inflicted  on  the 
unconscious  babe  by  fastening  Ebenezer  or  Tabitha  on  it 
for  life.  Where  this  folly  is  avoided  by  parents,  they  often 
outrage  their  sons  by  baptizing  them  George  Washington, 
Thomas  Jefferson,  John  Quincy  Adams,  or  Andrew  Jackson, 
or  worse  still,  loading  them  with  classical  names,  like  those 
of  which  Ex-President  Grant  is  a  conspicuous  victim.  The 
whims,  freaks,  and  eccentricities  which  dictate  the  names  of 
children  are  as  inexplicable  as  they  are  multifarious.  At  a 
United  States  census  some  years  ago,  record  was  obtained 
of  a  man  who  had  named  his  five  children  Imprimis, 
Finis,  Appendix,  Addendum,  and  Erratum.  It  has  been 
suggested  that  had  there  been  a  sixtli,  he  would  probably 
have  been  Supplement.  Everybody  is  familiar  with  the 
story  of  a  worthy  lady,  who,  having  named  four  sons 
successively  Matthew,  Mark,  Luke,  and  John,  insisted  on 


3-1-i  words;    TIIEIH    LSE    A.VI)    AliL'SE. 

calling  the  fifth  Acts, — a  perversity  equalled  by  that  of 
the  father  of  ten  children,  who,  having  been  blessed  with 
three  more,  named  them  Moreover,  Nevertheless,  and 
Notwithstanding.  No  doubt  these  last  appellatives  are 
mythical;  but  it  is  positively  certain  that  names  are  often 
given  to  children,  which,  being  utterly  incongruous  with 
their  looks,  descent,  or  character,  rendering  them  targets 
for  coai'se  jests,  or  raising  expectations  that  are  sure  to 
be  falsified,  are  productive  to  their  bearers,  if  they  are 
at  all  sensitive,  of  an  incalculable  amount  of  suffering. 
In  naming  a  child  his  individuality  should,  first  of  all,  be 
recognized.  Instead  of  being  invested  with  the  cast-off 
appellation  of  some  dead  ancestor,  as  musty  as  the  clothes 
he  wore, —  a  ghostly  index-finger  forever  pointing  to  the 
past, —  he  should  have  a  fresh  name,  free  from  all  ridicu- 
lous or  unpleasant  associations,  congruous  with  his  proba- 
ble destiny,  and  suggestive  of  a  history  to  be  filled,  a  life 
of  usefulness  to  be  lived.  If  such  a  name  cannot  be  in- 
vented, let  him  bear  the  plain,  honest  one  of  John,  Edward, 
or  Robert,  which  affords  no  opportunity  for  gibes,  and 
consequent  heart-bui'nings,  promises  nothing,  disappoints 
nobody,  and  yet  may  be  transfigured  and  glorified  by  tha 
noblest  and  most  illustrious  deeds. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

NICKNAMES. 

The  word  "nick"  in  nickname  is  cognate  witli  tlie  German  word  n«cA:en,  to 
mock,  to  quiz,  and  the  English  word  "nag,"  to  tease,  or  provoke. — W.  L. 
Blacklet,   Word- Gossip. 

A  good  name  will  wear  out,  a  bad  one  may  bo  turned:  a  nickname  lasts 
forever.— Zimmerman. 

J'ai  ete  toujours  etonne  qne  les  Families  qui  portent  un  Nom  odieux  ou 
ridicule,  ne  le  quitteut  pas.-  Batle. 

AMONG  the  books  that  need  to  be  written,  one  of  the 
-^^  most  instructive  would  be  a  treatise  on  the  history 
and  influence,  of  nicknames.  Philosophers  who  study  the 
great  events  in  the  world's  history,  are  too  apt,  in  their 
eagerness  to  discover  adequate  causes,  to  overlook  the 
apparently  trifling  means  by  which  mankind  are  influ- 
enced. They  ai'e  eloquent  enough  upon  the  dawning  of 
a  new  idea  in  the  world,  when  its  effects  are  set  forth  in 
all  the  pomp  of  elaborate  histories  and  disquisitions;  but 
they  would  do  a  greater  service  by  showing  how  and 
when,  by  being  condensed  into  a  pithy  word  or  phrase,  it 
wins  the  acceptance  of  mankind.  The  influence  of  songs 
upon  a  people  in  times  of  excitement  and  revolution  is 
familiar  to  all.  "  When  the  French  mob  began  to  sing 
the  Marseillaise,  they  had  evidently  caught  the  spirit  of 
the  revolution;  and  what  a  song  is  to  a  political  essay, 
a  nickname  is  to  a  song."  In  itself  such  a  means  of 
influence  may  seem  trivial;  and  yet  history  shows  that 
it  is  no  easy  thing  to  estimate  the  force  of  these  ingenious 
appellations. 

845 


34G  WORDS;    TIIEIIl    USE   AND    ABUSE. 

The  name  of  a  man  is  not  a  mere  label,  which  may  be 
detached,  as  one  detaches  a  label  from  a  piece  of  lifeless 
furniture.  As  Goethe  once  feelingly  said,  it  is  not  like 
a  cloak,  which  only  hangs  about  a  man,  and  at  which  one 
may  at  any  rate  be  allowed  to  pull  and  twitch;  but  it  is 
a  close-fitting  garment,  which  has  grown  over  and  over 
him,  like  his  skin,  and  which  one  cannot  scrape  and  flay 
without  injuring  himself.  Names  not  only  represent  cer- 
tain facts  or  thoughts,  but  they  powerfully  mould  the 
facts  and  thoughts  which  they  represent.  Men  have  borne 
names  which  they  have  felt  to  be  stigmas,  an  active  cause 
of  discouragement  and  failure  to  their  dying  day;  and 
they  have  borne  names,  inherited  from  their  ancestors, 
which  have  lifted  them  above  themselves,  by  bringing 
them  into  fellowship  with  a  past  of  high  effort  or  generous 
sacrifice. 

In  politics,  it  has  long  been  observed  that  no  orator 
can  compare  for  a  moment  in  effect  with  him  who  can 
give  apt  and  telling  nicknames.  Brevity  is  the  soul  of 
wit,  and  of  all  eloquence  a  nickname  is  the  most  concise 
and  irresistible.  It  is  a  terse,  pointed,  short-hand  mode 
of  reasoning,  condensing  a  volume  of  meaning  into  an 
epithet,  and  is  especially  j^opular  in  these  days  of  steam 
and  electric  telegraphs,  because  it  saves  the  trouble  of 
thinking.  There  is  a  deep  instinct  in  man  which  prompts 
him,  when  engaged  in  any  controversy,  whether  of  tongue 
or  pen,  to  assume  to  himself  some  honorable  name  which 
begs  the  whole  matter  in  dispute,  and  at  the  same  time 
to  fasten  on  his  adversary  a  name  which  shall  render  him 
ridiculous,  odious,  or  contemptible.  By  facts  and  logic 
you  may  command  the  assent  of  the  few;  but  by  nick- 
names you  may  enlist  the  passions  of  the  million   on  your 


NICKNAMES.  347 

side.  Who  can  doubt  that  when,  in  the  English  civil 
wars,  the  parliamentary  party  styled  themselves  "  the 
Godly"  and  their  opponents  "the  Malignants,"  the  ques- 
tion at  issue,  wherever  entrance  could  be  gained  for  these 
words,  was  already  decided?  Who  can  estimate  how  much 
the  Whig  party  in  this  country  was  damaged  by  the 
derisive  sarcasm,  "All  the  decency,"  or  its  opponents  by 
the  appellation  of  "  Locofocos"?  Is  it  not  certain  that  the 
odious  name  "Copperheads,"  which  was  so  early  in  our 
late  civil  war  affixed  to  the  northern  sympathizers  with 
the  South,  had  an  incalculable  influence  in  gagging  them, 
and  in  preventing  their  numbers  from   multiplying? 

It  has  been  truly  said  that  in  the  distracted  times  of 
early  revolution,  any  nickname,  however  vague,  will  fully 
answer  a  purpose,  though  neither  those  who  are  blackened 
by  the  odium,  nor  those  who  cast  it,  can  define  the  hateful 
appellative.  The  historian  Hume  says  that  when  the  term 
"Delinquents"  came  into  vogue  in  England,  it  expressed 
a  degree  and  species  of  guilt  not  easily  known  or  ascer- 
tained. It  served,  however,  the  end  of  those  revolution- 
ists who  had  coined  it,  by  involving  any  person  in,  or 
coloring  any  action  by,  "delinquency";  and  many  of  the 
nobility  and  gentry  were,  without  any  questions  being 
asked,  suddenl}'  discovered  to  have  committed  the  crime  of 
"delinquency."  The  degree  in  which  the  political  opinions 
of  our  countrymen  were  influenced,  and  their  feelings 
embittered,  some  forty  years  ago,  by  the  appellation 
"Federalist."  cannot  be  easily  estimated.  The  fact  that 
many  who  heard  the  derisive  title  knew  not  its  origin, 
and  some  not  even  its  meaning,  did  not  lessen  its  influence, 
—  as  an  incident  related  by  Judge  Gaston  of  North  Caro- 
lina well  illustrates.     In  travellin;f  on  his  circuit  throuixh 


348  words;  tiieik  use  and  abuse. 

the  backwoods  of  tliat  state,  he  learned  that  the  people  of 
a  certain  town  liad  elected  a  Democrat,  in  place  of  a  Whip,', 
to  serve  them  in  the  legislature.  When  asked  the  reason 
of  this  change,  his  informant,  an  honest,  rough-looking 
citizen,  replied:  "Oli,  we  didn't  reelect  Mr.  A,  because  he 
is  a.fefhrral.'"  ''A  fetheral!"  exclaimed  the  judge,  "what  is 
a  fetheral?"  "I  don't  know,"  was  the  reply,  "but  it  aint 
a  humany 

There  is  no  man  so  insignificant  that  he  may  not  blast 
the  reputation  of  another  by  fastening  upon  him  an  odious 
or  ludicrous  nickname.  Even  the  most  shining  character 
may  thus  be  dragged  down  by  the  very  reptiles  of  the 
race  to  the  depths  of  infamy.  A  parrot  may  be  taught 
to  call  names,  and,  if  you  have  a  spite  against  your  neigh- 
bor, may  be  made  to  give  him  a  deal  of  annoyance,  without 
much  wit  either  in  the  employer  or  the  puppet.  Goethe 
felt  this  when  he  made  the  remark  above  quoted,  which 
was  provoked  by  a  coarse  pun  made  on  his  name  by  Her- 
der. Though  no  man  could  better  afford  to  despise  such 
a  jest,  it  rankled,  apparentl}',  even  in  his  great  mind;  for, 
forty  years  later,  after  Herder's  death,  he  spoke  of  it  bit- 
terly, in  the  course  of  a  very  kindly  criticism  upon  that 
writer,  as  an  instance  of  the  sarcasm  which  often  rendered 
him  unamiable.  Hotspur  would  have  had  a  starling  taught 
to  speak  nothing  but  "  Mortimer"  in  the  ears  of  his  enemy. 
An  insulting  or  degrading  epithet  w^ill  stick  to  a  man  long 
after  it  has  been  proved  malicious  or  false.  Who  could 
dissociate  with  the  name  of  Van  Buren  the  idea  of  craft 
or  cunning,  after  he  had  become  known  as  the  "  Kinder- 
hook  Fox";  or  who  ever  venerated  .John  Tyler  as  the  Chief 
Magistrate  of  the  nation,  after  he  had  been  politically 
baptized    as   "His   Accidency"?     Who    can    tell   how    far 


NICKNAMES.  349 

General  Scott's  prospects  for  the  Presidency  were  dam- 
aged by  the  contemptuous  nickname  of  "Old  Fuss  and 
Feathers";  especially  after  he  had  nearly  signed  his  own 
political  death-warrant  by  that  fatal  allusion  to  "a  hasty 
plate  of  soup,"  which  convulsed  the  nation  with  laughter 
from  the  St.  Croix  to  the  Rio  Grande?  The  hero  of  Chip- 
pewa found  it  hard  to  breast  the  torrent  of  ridicule  which 
this  derisive  title  brought  down  upon  him.  It  would  have 
been  easier  far  to  stand  up  against  the  iron  shock  of  the 
battle-field.  Who,  again,  has  forgotten  how  a  would-be 
naval  bard  of  America  was  "damned  to  everlasting  fame" 
by  a  verbal  tin-pail  attached  to  his  name  in  the  form  of 
one  of  his  own  verses?*  "I  have  heard  an  eminent  char- 
acter boast,"  says  Hazlitt,  "  that  he  did  more  to  produce 
the  war  with  Bonaparte  by  nicknaming  him  '  The  Corsi- 
can,'  than  all  the  state  papers  and  documents  on  the  sub- 
ject put  together."  "  Give  a  dog  a  bad  name,"  says  the 
proverb,  "  and  you  hang  him."  It  was  only  necessary  to 
nickname  Burke  "The  Dinner  Bell,"  to  make  even  his 
rising  to  speak  a  signal  for  a  general  emptying  of  the 
house. 

The  first  step  in  overthrowing  any  great  social  wrong 
is  to  fix  upon  it  a  name  which  expresses  its  character. 
From  the  hour  when  "  taxation  without  representation " 
came  to  be  regarded  by  our  fathers  as  a  synonym  for 
"  tyranny,"  the  cau.se  of  the  colonies  was  safe.  Had  tlie 
SDiilhern  slaves  been  called  by  no  other  name  than  that 
used  by  their  masters, —  namely,  "servants," — they  would 
have  been  kept  in  bondage  till  they  had  won  their 
freedom  by  the  swoi'd. 

The  French  Revolution  of  17S9  was  fruitful  of  examples 

•"The  sun  has  gonu  down  with  his  buttle-stained  eye." 


350  words;   their  use  and  abuse 

showing  the  ease  with  which  ignorant  men  are  led  and 
excited  by  words  whose  real  import  and  tendency  they  do 
not  understand,  and  illustrating  the  truth  of  South's 
remark,  that  a  plausible  and  insignificant  word  in  the 
mouth  of  an  expert  demagogue  is  a  dangerous  and  destruc- 
tive weapon.  Napoleon  was  aware  of  this,  when  he  de- 
clared that  "  it  is  by  epithets  that  you  govern  mankind." 
Destroy  men's  reverence  for  the  names  of  institutions  hoary 
with  age,  and  you  destroy  the  institutions  themselves. 
"  Pull  down  the  nests,"  John  Knox  used  to  say,  "  and  the 
rooks  will  fly  away."  The  people  of  Versailles  insulted 
with  impunity  in  the  streets,  and  at  the  gates  of  the  Assem- 
bly, those  whom  they  called  "Aristocrats";  and  the  magic 
power  of  the  word  was  doubled,  when  aided  by  the  further 
device  of  calling  the  usurping  Commons  the  "  National  As- 
sembly." When  the  title  of  Frondeiirs,  or  "the  Slingers," 
was  given  to  Cardinal  de  Retz's  party,  he  encouraged  its 
application,  "  for  we  observed,"  says  he,  "  that  the  distinc- 
tion of  a  name  healed  the  minds  of  the  people."  The  French 
showman,  who,  when  royalty  and  its  forms  were  abolished 
in  France,  changed  the  name  of  his  "  Roi/al  Tiger,"  so 
called, —  the  pride  of  his  menagerie, — to  ^''National  Tiger," 
showed  a  profound  knowledge  of  his  countrymen  and  of  the 
catchwords  by  which  to  win  their  patronage. 

A  nickname  is  the  most  stinging  of  all  species  of  satire, 
because  it  gives  no  chance  of  reph^  Attack  a  man  with 
specific,  point-blank  charges,  and  he  can  meet  and  repel 
them;  but  a  nickname  baffles  reply  by  its  very  vagueness; 
it  presents  no  tangible  or  definite  idea  to  the  mind,  no  horn 
of  a  dilemma  with  which  the  victim  can  grapple.  The  very 
attempt  to  defend  himself  only  renders  him  the  more  ridic- 
ulous;   it  looks   like  raising  an   ocean   to   drown  a  fly,  or 


NICKNAMES.  351 

firing  a  cannon  at  a  wasp,  to  meet  a  petty  gibe  witli  formal 
testimony  or  elaborate  argument.  Or,  if  your  defence  is 
listened  to  without  jeers,  it  avails  you  nothing.  It  has  no 
effect, —  does  not  tell, —  excites  no  sensation.  The  laugh  is 
against  you,  and  all  your  i^rotests  come  like  the  physician's 
prescription  at  the  funeral,  too  late. 

The  significance  of  nicknames  is  strikingly  illustrated 
liy  the  fact  that,  as  a  late  writer  suggests,  you  cannot  prop- 
erly hate  a  man  of  different  opinions  from  your  own  till 
you  have  labelled  him  with  some  unpleasant  epithet.  In 
theological  debates,  a  heretic  may  be  defined  as  a  man  with 
a  nickname.  Till  we  have  succeeded  in  fastening  a  name 
upon  him,  he  is  confounded  among  the  general  mass  of  the 
orthodox;  his  peculiarities  are  presumably  not  sufficient  to 
constitute  him  into  a  separate  species.  But  let  the  name 
come  to  us  by  a  flash  of  inspiration,  and  how  it  sticks  to  the 
victim  through  his  whole  life!  There  is  a  refinement  of 
cruelty  in  some  nicknames  which  resembles  the  barbarity  of 
the  old  heathen  persecutors,  who  wrapped  up  Christians  in 
the  skins  of  wild  beasts,  so  that  they  might  be  worried  and 
torn  in  pieces  by  dogs.  "  Do  but  paint  an  angel  black," 
says  an  old  divine,  "and  that  is  enough  to  make  him  pass 
for  a  devil."  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  loving  nick- 
names, which  are  given  to  men  b}'  their  friends, —  especially 
to  those  who  are  of  a  frank,  genial,  companionable  nature. 
The  name  of  Charles  Lamb  was  ingeniously  transformed 
into  the  Latin  diminutive  Carhf/ nidus  ;  and  the  friends  of 
Keats,  in  allusion  to  his  occasional  excess  of  fun  and  animal 
spirits,  i)unned  upon  his  name,  shortening  it  from  .lolin 
Keats  into  "  Junkets." 

That  prince  of  polemics,  Cobbett,  was  a  masterly  in- 
ventor of  nicknames,  and  some  of  his  felicitous  epithets  will 


353  words;  their  usk  and  abuse. 

not  l>e  for^fotlen  for  many  years  to  come.  Among  tlif; 
witty  labels  with  which  he  ticketed  his  enemies  were 
"  Scorpion  Stanley,''  "  Spinning  Jenny  Peel,"  "  the  pink- 
nosed  Liverpool,"  "  the  unbaptized,  buttonless  blackguards  " 
(applied  to  the  Quakers),  and  "  Prosperity  Robinson."  The 
nickname,  "Old  Glory,"  given  by  him,  stuck  for  life  to  Sir 
Francis  Burdett,  his  former  patron  and  life-long  creditor. 
"  y^olus  Canning "  provoked  unextinguishable  laughter 
among  high  and  low;  and  it  is  said  that  of  all  the  devices 
to  annoy  the  brilliant  but  vain  Lord  Erskine,  none  was 
more  teasing  than  being  constantly  addressed  by  his  second 
title  of  "Baron  Clackmannon."  One  of  the  literary  tricks 
of  Carlyle  is  to  heap  contemptuous  nicknames  upon  the 
objects  he  dislikes;  as,  "  The  Dismal  Science  "  of  Political 
Economy,  "The  Nigger  Question,"  "Pig  Philosophy," 
"  Hoi'se-hair  and  Bombazine  Procedure,"  etc. 

The  meaning  of  nicknames,  as  of  many  other  words,  is 
often  a  mystery.  Often  they  are  apparently  meaningless, 
and  incapable  of  any  rational  explanation;  yet  they  are 
probably  due,  in  such  cases,  to  some  subtle,  imperceptible 
analogy,  of  which  even  their  authors  were  hardly  conscious, 
When  the  English  and  French  armies  were  encamped  in 
the  Crimea,  they,  by  common  consent,  called  the  Turks 
"  Bono  Johny ;  "  but  it  would  not  be  easy  to  tell  why.  A 
late  French  prince  was  called  "  Plomb-plomb  ";  yet  there 
is  no  such  word  in  the  French  language,  and  different 
accounts  have  been  given  of  its  origin.  To  explain,  again, 
why  nicknames  have  such  an  influence, —  so  magical  an 
effect, —  is  equally  difficult;  one  might  as  well  try  to  ex- 
plain wh}''  certain  combinations  of  colors  or  musical  sounds 
impart  an  exquisite  pleasure.  All  we  know,  upon  both 
these    points,    is,    that   certain  persons  are   doomed   to   be 


NICKNAMES.  353 

known  by  a  nickname;  at  the  time  of  life  when  the 
word-making  faculty  is  in  the  highest  activity,  all  their 
acquaintances  are  long  in  labor  to  hit  off  the  fit  appel- 
lation; suddenly  it  comes  like  an  electric  spark,  and  it  is 
felt  by  everybody  to  be  impossible  to  think  of  the  victim 
without  his  appropriate  designation.  In  vain  have  his 
godfathers  and  godmothers  called  him  Robert  or  Thomas; 
"Bob,"  or  "Tom,"'  or  something  wholly  unrelated  to  these, 
he  is  fated  to  be  to  the  end  of  his  days. 

Many  of  the  happiest  of  these  headmarks,  which  stick 
like  a  burr  from  the  moment  they  are  invented,  are  from 
sources  utterly  unknown;  they  appear,  they  are  on  every- 
body's lips,  but  whence  they  came  nobody  can  tell.  One 
of  the  commonest  ways  in  which  nicknames  are  suggested 
is  by  some  egregious  blunder  which  one  makes.  Thus,  I 
knew  a  schoolboy  to  be  asked  who  demolished  Carthage,  and 
upon  his  answering  "  Scorpio  Africanus,"  to  be  promptly 
nicknamed  "  Old  Scorp."  Another  way  is  by  a  glaring 
contradiction  between  a  man's  name  and  his  character, — 
when  he  is  ridiculed  as  sailing  under  false  colors,  or 
claiming  a  merit  which  does  not  belong  to  him.  There 
is  in  all  men,  as  Trench  has  observed,  a  sense  of  the 
significance  of  names, —  a  feeling  that  they  ought  to  bo, 
and  in  a  world  of  absolute  truth  w^ould  be,  the  utterance 
of  the  innermost  character  or  qualities  of  the  persons 
that  bear  them;  and  hence  nothing  is  more  telling  in  a 
personal  controversy  than  the  exposure  of  a  striking  incon- 
gruity between  a  name  and  the  person  who  owns  it.  I 
have  been  told  that  the  late  President  Lincoln,  on  being 
introduced  to  a  very  stout  person  by  the  name  of  Small, 
remarked,  "Small,  Small!  Well,  what  strange  names  they 
do  give  men,  to  be  sure!     Why,  they've  got  a  fellow  down 


354  words;  their  use  and  abuse, 

in  Virginia  whom  they  call  Wise!'"  In  the  same  spirit, 
Jerome,  one  of  the  Fathers  of  the  Church,  being  engaged 
in  controversy  with  one  Vigilantius,  i.e.,  "  the  Watchful," 
about  certain  vigils  which  the  latter  opposed,  stigmatized 
him  as  Dorniitantius,  or  "the  Sleeper."  But  more  fre- 
quently the  nickname  is  suggested  by  the  real  name  where 
there  is  no  such  antagonism  between  them, —  where  the 
latter,  as  it  is,  or  by  a  slight  change,  can  be  made  to  con- 
tain a  confession  of  the  ignorance  or  folly  of  the  bearer. 
Thus,  Tiberius  Claudius  Nero,  in  allusion  to  his  drunken- 
ness, was  called  "  Biberius  Caldius  Mero";  and  the  Arians 
were  nicknamed  "Ariomanites."  What  can  be  happier 
in  this  way  than  the  "  Brand  of  Hell,"  applied  to  Pope 
Hildebrand;  the  title  of  "Slanders,"  affixed  by  Fuller  to 
Sanders,  the  foul-mouthed  libeller  of  Queen  Elizabeth;  the 
"Vanity"  and  "Sterility,"  which  Baxter  coined  from  the 
names  of  Vane  and  Sterry;  and  the  term  "Sweepnet," 
which  that  skilful  master  of  the  passions,  Cicero,  gave  to 
the  infamous  Prsetor  of  Sicily,  whose  name,  Verres  (verro), 
was  prophetic  of  his  "sweeping"  the  province, —  declaring 
that  others  might  be  partial  to  the  jus  rcrrinum  (which 
might  mean  verrine  law  or  boar  sauce),  but  not  he?  On 
the  other  hand,  the  nickname  Schiiiokephalos,  or  "onion- 
head,"  which  the  Athenians  gave  to  Pericles  on  account 
of  the  shape  of  his  head,  was  unredeemed  by  wit  or  humor. 
The  people  of  Italy  are  exceedingly  fond  of  nicknames; 
and  it  is  an  odd  peculiarity  of  many  which  they  give  that 
the  persons  so  characterized  are  known  onl}'  by  their 
nicknames.  In  the  case  of  many  celebrated  persons  the 
nickname  has  wholly  obliterated  the  true  name.  Thus 
GHcrchio  "Squint  Eye,"  Masaccio  "Dirt}^  Tom,"  Tintoretto 
"The    Little    Dyer,"  Ghirlandaio   "The   Garland-Maker," 


NICKNAMES.  355 

Luca  del  Robhia  "  Luke  of  the  Madder,"  Spagitoletto 
"  The  Little  Spaniard,"  and  Di4  Sarto  "  The  Tailor's  Son,'" 
would  scarcely  be  recognized  under  their  proper  names  of 
Barbieri,  Guido,  Robusti,  Barbarelli,  Corradi,  Kibera,  and 
Vannachi.  The  following,  too,  are  all  nicknames  of  emi- 
nent persons  derived  from  their  places  of  Ijirth:  Perugino, 
Veronese,  Aretino,  Pisano,  Giulio  Romano,  Correggio,  Par- 
megiano.* 

There  is  probably  no  country,  unless  it  be  our  own,  in 
which  nicknames  have  flourished  more  than  in  England. 
Every  party  there  has  had  its  watchwords  with  which  to 
rally  its  members,  or  to  set  on  its  own  bandogs  to  worry  and 
tear  those  of  another  faction;  and  what  is  quite  extraordi- 
nary is,  that  many  of  the  names  of  political  parties  and 
religious  sects  were  originally  nicknames  given  in  the 
bitterest  scorn  and  party  hate,  yet  ultimately  accepted  by 
the  party  themselves.  Thus  "  Tory "  originally  meant  an 
Irish  freebooting  bog-trotter, —  an  outlaw  who  favored  the 
cause  of  James  II;  and  "  Whig"  is  derived  from  the  Scotch 
name  for  sour  milk,  which  was  supposed  aptly  to  charac- 
terize the  disposition  of  the  Republicans.  "Methodists" 
was  a  name  given  in  1729,  first  to  John  and  Charles 
Wesley  at  Oxford,  on  account  of  their  close  observance  of 
system  and  method  in  their  studies  and  worship,  and  after- 
ward to  their  followers.  So  in  other  countries,  the  "Lu- 
therans" received  their  name,  in  which  they  now  glory,  from 
their  antagonists.  "Capuchin"  was  a  jesting  name  given 
by  the  boys  in  the  streets  to  certain  Franciscan  monks,  on 
account  of  the  peaked  and  pointed  hood  {nijiKirio)  which 
they  wore.  The  Dominicans  gloried  all  the  more  in  their 
name  when   it  was  resolviid  by  their  enemies   into  Duin'nii 

*  "  Hoba  di  IJoinn,"  by  W.  W.  Story. 


356  AVORDS;    THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

canes;  they  were  proud  to  acknowledge  that  they  were,  in- 
deed, "the  Lord's  watchdogs,"  who  barked  at  the  slightest 
appearance  of  heresy,  and  strove  to  drive  it  away.  Finally, 
the  highest  name  which  any  man  can  bear  was  originally 
a  nickname  given  by  the  idle  and  witty  inhabitants  of 
Antioch,  in  Asia  Minor.  In  the  early  days  of  Christianity, 
when  the  new  faith  was  preached  with  all  the  vigor  of 
intense  conviction,  and  the  enthusiasm  attendant  upon  a 
fresh  experiment  in  private  and  social  morality;  when 
the  apostles  were  said  to  be  "  turning  the  world  upside 
down,"  and  were,  indeed,  promulgating  a  religion  which 
was  soon  to  revolutionize  civilized  society;  there  was,  for 
a  long  time,  great  difficulty  in  finding  a  name  for  the  new 
faith  and  its  professors.  The  apostles,  indeed,  had  no 
name  for  it  whatever;  they  spoke  of  the  nascent  religion 
simply  as  "the  way,"  or  "this  way."  Paul  says  that  he 
"persecuted  this  icaij  unto  the  death,"  and  at  Ephesus,  it 
is  said,  "  there  arose  no  small  stir  about  the  way."  By  the 
Jews  the  converts  to  the  new  religion  were  called  "  Naza- 
renes,"  a  term  of  contempt  which  they  could  not,  of  course, 
adopt.  The  Jews  believed  in  the  coming  of  a  Messiah, 
though  they  rejected  the  true  one;  but  the  appearance  of 
any  Christ  was  a  wholly  new  and  original  idea  to  the 
pagan  world,  and  the  constant  repetition  of  the  striking 
name  of  Christ  in  the  discourses  of  the  missionaries  at 
Antioch,  would  have  naturally  suggested  to  the  keen- 
witted Greek  pagans  around  them  to  call  them  after  the 
name  of  their  Master.  The  Antiochenes  were  famous  in 
all  antiquity  for  their  nicknames,  for  inventing  which 
they  had  a  positive  genius;  and  it  is  altogether  probable, 
—  indeed,  there  is  hardl}^  a  doubt, —  that  the  name  "Chris- 
tian"   was   originally   a   term   of   ridicule   or  of  reproach, 


NICKNAMES.  357 

given  by  tlieni  to  the  first  converts  from  paganism.  It 
was,  in  fact,  a  nickname,  designed  to  intimate  tliat  the 
teachers  and  the  taught,  who  talked  continually  about 
their  Christ,  were  a  set  of  fanatics  who  deserved  only  to 
be  laughed  at  for  their  infatuation.  But  what  was  thus 
meant  as  an  insult  was  instantly  accepted  by  the  believers 
in  Christ  as  a  title  of  honor,  implying  that  devotion  to 
Christ  was  not  an  accident,  but  the  vei-y  essence  and  soul 
of  their  i-eligion.  "Nothing  else,"  says  Canon  Liddon, 
"  expressed  so  tersely  the  central  I'eason  for  the  fierce 
antagonism  of  the  pagans  to  the  new  religion:  it  was  the 
religion  of  the  divine,  but  crucified  Christ;  nothing  else 
expressed  so  adequately  the  Christian  sense  of  what  Chris- 
tianity was  and  is, —  a  religion  not  merely  founded  by 
Christ,  but  centring  in  Christ,  so  that,  apart  from  Him, 
it  has,  properly  speaking,  no  existence,  so  that  it  exists 
only  as  an  extension  and  perpetuation  of  His  life." 

The  Dutch  people  long  prided  themselves  on  the  humili- 
ating nickname  of  Les  Gueulx,  "the  Beggars,"  which 
was  given  in  1566  to  the  revolters  against  the  rule  of 
Philip  II.  Margaret  of  Parma,  then  governor  of  the 
Netherlands,  being  somewhat  disconcerted  at  the  numbers 
of  that  party,  when  they  presented  a  petition  to  her,  was 
reassured  by  her  minister,  who  remarked  to  her  that  there 
was  nothing  to  be  feared  from  a  crowd  of  beggars. 
"Great  was  the  indignation  of  all,"  says  Motley,  "that 
the  state  councillor  (the  Seigneur  de  Berlaymont)  should 
have  dared  to  stigmatize  as  beggars  a  band  of  gentlemen 
with  the  best  blood  of  the  land  in  their  veins.  Brederode, 
on  the  contrary,  smoothing  their  anger,  assured  them  with 
good  humor  that  nothing  could  be  more  fortunate.  'They 
call  us  "beggars!"'  said  he;  'let  us  accept  the  name.     We 


358  wouDs;  theih  use  axd  a  husk. 

will  contend  with  the  Inquisition,  but  remain  loyal  to  the 
king,  till  compelled  to  wear  the  beggar's  sack.  .  .  Long 
live  the  beggars!'  he  cried,  as  he  wiped  his  beard,  and  set 
the  bowl  down;  '  Virent  les  gueulx!'  Then,  for  the  first 
time,  from  the  lips  of  those  reckless  nobles  rose  the  famous 
cr}^  wWch  was  so  often  to  ring  over  land  and  sea,  amid 
blazing  cities,  on  blood-stained  decks,  through  the  smoke 
and  carnage  of  many  a  stricken  field.  The  humor  of 
Brederode  was  hailed  with  deafening  shouts  of  applause. 
The  shibboleth  was  invented.  The  conjuration  which  they 
had  been  anxiously  seeking  was  found.  Their  enemies 
had  provided  them  with  a  spell,  which  was  to  prove, 
in  after  days,  potent  enough  to  start  a  spirit  from  palace 
or  hovel,  as  the  deeds  of  the  '  wild  beggars '  the  '  wood 
beggars,'  and  the  '  beggars  of  the  sea,'  taught  Philip  at  last 
to  understand  the  nation  which  he  had  driven  to  madness." 
In  like  manner  the  French  Protestants  accepted  and 
gloried  in  the  scornful  nickname  of  the  "  Huguenots,"  as 
did  the  two  fierce  Italian  factions  in  those  of  "  Guelphs," 
or  "Guelfs,"  and  "Ghibellines."  It  was  in  the  twelfth 
century,  at  the  siege  of  Weinsberg,  a  hereditary  possession 
of  the  Welfs,  that  the  war-cries,  "  Hurrah  for  Welf ! " 
"Hurrah  for  Waibling!"  which  gave  rise  to  the  party 
names,  "Welfs"  and  "Waiblings"  (Italice,  "Guelfs"  and 
"Ghibellines"),  were  first  heard.  Even  the  title  of  the 
British  "  Premier,"  or  "  Prime  Minister,"  now  one  of  the 
highest  dignity,  was  at  first  a  nickname,  given  in  pure 
mockei'y, —  the  statesman  to  whom  it  was  applied  being 
Sir  Robert  Walpole,  as  will  be  seen  by  the  following  words 
spoken  by  him  in  the  House  of  Commons  in  1742:  "  Hav- 
ing invested  me  with  a  kind  of  mock  dignity,  and  styled 
me  a  '  Prime  Minister,'  they  (the  opposition)  impute  to  me 


XICKXAMES.  SoD 

an  unpardonable  abuse  of  the  chimerical  authority  whicli 
tliey  only  created  and  conferred."  It  is  remarkable  that 
the  nickname  Caesar  has  given  the  title  to  the  heads  of 
two  great  nations,  Germany  and  Russia  {kaiser,  czar). 

It  is  a  fortunate  thing  when  men  who  have  been 
branded  with  names  intended  to  make  them  hateful  or 
ridiculous,  can  thus  turn  the  tables  on  their  denigreurs, 
by  accepting  and  glorying  in  their  new  titles.  It  was 
this  which  Lord  Halifax  did  when  he  was  called  "a  trim- 
mer." Instead  of  quarrelling  with  the  nickname,  he  ex- 
ulted in  it  as  a  title  of  honor.  "  Everything  good,"  he 
said,  "  trims  between  extremes.  The  temperate  zone  trims 
between  the  climate  in  which  men  are  roasted,  and  the 
climate  in  which  men  are  frozen.  The  English  Church 
trims  between  the  Anabaptist  madness  and  the  Papist 
lethargy.  The  English  constitution  trims  between  Turkish 
despotism  and  Polish  anarchy.  Virtue  is  nothing  but  a 
just  temper  between  propensities,  any  one  of  which,  in- 
dulged to  excess,  becomes  vice.  Nay,  the  perfection  of 
the  Supreme  Being  himself  consists  in  the  exact  equilib- 
rium of  attributes,  none  of  which  could  preponderate 
without  disturbing  the  whole  moral  and  physical  order 
of  the  world."  * 

The  nicknames  "Quaker,"  "Puritan,"  "Roundhead," 
unlike  those  we  have  just  named,  were  never  accepted  by 
those  to  whom  they  were  given.  "Puritan"  was  first 
heard  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  was  given  to 
a  party  of  purists  who  would  have  reformed  the  Reforma- 
tion. They  were  also  ridiculed,  from  their  fastidiousness 
about  trivial  matters,  as  "Precisians";  Drayton  charac- 
terizes them   as  persons  that  for  a  painted  glass  window 

*Macaulay°8  "  History  of  Euglaud,"  Vul.  II. 


3G0  WORDS;    THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

would  pull  down  the  whole  church.  The  distinction 
between  "Roundhead"  and  "Cavaliei-"  first  appeared  dur- 
ing the  civil  war  between  Charles  I  and  his  Parliament. 
A  foe  to  all  outward  ornament,  the  "Roundhead"  wore 
liis  hair  cropped  close,  while  the  "Cavalier"  was  contra- 
distinguished by  his  chivalrous  tone,  his  romantic  spirit, 
and  his  flowing  locks. 

All  readers  of  history  are  familiar  with  "  The  Rump," — 
the  contemptuous  nickname  given  to  the  Long  Parliament 
at  the  close  of  its  career.  The  "  Rump,"  Mr.  Disraeli 
remarks,  became  a  perpetual  whetstone  for  the  loyal  wits, 
till  at  length  its  former  admirers,  the  rabble  themselves, 
in  town  and  country,  vied  with  each  other  in  burning 
rumps  of  beef,  which  were  hung  by  chains  on  a  gallows 
with  a  bonfire  underneath,  and  proved  how  the  people, 
like  children,  come  at  length  to  make  a  plaything  of  that 
which  was  once  their  bugbear. 

A  member  of  the  British  Parliament  in  the  reign  of 
George  III  is  known  as  "  Single-speech  Hamilton,"  and  is 
referred  to  by  that  designation  as  invariably  as  if  it  were 
his  baptismal  name.  He  made  one,  and  but  one,  good 
speech  during  his  parliamentaiy  careei*.  "  Boot-jack  Rob- 
inson" was  the  derisive  title  given  to  a  mediocre  i)olitician, 
who,  during  a  crisis  in  the  ministry  of  the  Duke  of  New- 
castle, was  made  Home  Secretary  and  ministerial  leader 
of  the  House  of  Commons.  "Sir  Thomas  Robinson  lead 
us!"  indignantly  exclaimed  Pitt  to  Fox;  "the  duke  might 
as  well  send  his  boot-jack  to  lead  us!"  It  is  said  that 
Mr.  Dundas,  afterward  Lord  Melville,  got  his  nickname 
from  a  new  word  which  he  introduced  in  a  speech  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  in  1775,  on  the  American  war.  He 
was   the    first    to    use    the    word    "  starvation "    (a   hybrid 


NICKNAMES.  3C1 

formation,  in  which  a  Saxon  root  was  united  with  a  Latin 
ending),  which  provoked  shouts  of  contemptuous  laughter 
in  the  House;  and  he  was  always  afterward  called  by  his 
acquaintances,  "  Starvation  Dundas."  This  poor  specimen 
of  word-coining  was  long  resisted  by  the  lexicographers; 
and  one  modern  philological  dictionary  omits  it  even  now; 
but  it  has  long  been  sanctioned  by  usage.  One  of  the 
most  fatal  nicknames  ever  given  to  a  politician  was  one 
fastened  by  Sheridan  upon  Addington,  the  Prime  Minister 
of  England,  in  a  speech  made  in  Parliament  in  1803. 
Addington  was  the  son  of  an  eminent  physician,  and  some- 
thing in  his  air  and  manner  had  given  him,  to  a  limited 
extent,  the  name  of  "  the  Doctor."  Sheridan,  alluding  to 
the  personal  dislike  of  Addington  felt  by  many,  quoted  the 
well  known  epigram  of  Martial : 

"Non  amo  te,  Sabine,  nee  possum  dicere  quare; 
Hoc  tantum  possum  dicere,  non  amo  te;" 

and  added  the  English  parody: 

"  I  do  not  like  thee,  Doctor  Fell, 
The  reason  why  I  cannot  tell ; 
But  this,  I'm  siiro,  I  know  full  well, 
I  do  not  like  thee,  Doctor  Fell." 

His  droll  emphasis  on  the  word  "  Doctor,"  and  the  repe- 
tition of  it  in  the  course  of  the  speech,  drew  forth  peals 
of  laughter;  and  henceforth  the  butt  of  his  ridicule  was 
generally  known  as  "  The  Doctor."  The  Opposition  news- 
papers caught  up  the  title,  and  rang  innumerable  changes 
upon  it,  till  finally  the  Prime  Minister  was  fairly  over- 
whelmed by  the  laughter  of  his  enemies,  and  forced  to 
resign  his  office. 

Everybody   has   heard  of    "Ditto   to   Mr.    Burko";    the 
victim  of  this  title  was  a  Mr.  Conger,  who  was  elected  with 


302  words;  tiiliu  use  and  abuse. 

Burke  to  represent  the  city  of  Bristol.  Utterly  bewildered 
as  to  how  to  thank  the  electors  after  his  associate's  splen- 
did speech,  he  condensed  his  own  address  into  these  sig- 
nificant words:  "Gentlemen,  I  say  ditto  to  Mr.  Burke,  ditto 
to  Mr.  Burke!"  "Chicken  Taylor"  was  the  name  which, 
in  the  early  part  of  the  century,  long  stuck  to  Mr.  M.  A.  9 
Taylor;  he  contended  against  a  great  lawyer  in  the  House, 
and  then  apologized  that  he,  "  a  chicken  in  the  law,  should 
venture  on  a  fight  with  the  cock  of  Westminster."  "Adul- 
lamites,"  or  "Dwellers  in  the  Cave,"  the  name  given  by 
Mr.  Bright  to  Mr.  Lowe  and  some  of  his  Liberal  friends, — 
a  name  derived  from  the  Scripture  story  of  David  and  his 
followers  retiring  to  a  cave, — will  probably  long  continue 
to  be  applied  to  the  members  of  a  discontented  faction. 

Who  does  not  remember  the  nickname,  "  The  Spasmodic 
School  of  Poetry,"  which  was  given  to  three  or  four  young 
poets  some  thirty  years  ago?  It  was  in  the  brain  of  Pro- 
fessor Aytoun  that  this  title  originated,  and  immediately 
these  writers,  whose  salient  faults  were  thus  felicitously 
hit  oif,  were  everywhere  recognized  as  "spasmodists."  For 
yeai's  after,  no  one  of  these  minstrels  could  sti-ike  his  lyre 
in  public,  even  in  the  most  humdrum,  old-fashioned  way, 
but  the  cry  of  "spasmodist"  was  raised  so  loudly  that  he 
was  glad  to  retreat  into  his  wonted  obscurity.  Even  Ben 
Jonson,  the  sturdy  old  dramatist,  did  not  escape  a  nick- 
name. His  envious  rivals  dubbed  him  "The  Limestone 
and  Mortar  Poet,"  in  allusion  to  his  lack  of  spontaneity 
as  a  poet,  and  his  having  begun  life  as  a  bricklayer. 

Among  the  other  memorable  English  nicknames,  that  of 
"Jemmy  Twitcher,"  taken  from  the  chief  of  Maeheath's 
gang  in  "The  Beggar's  Opera,"  and  applied  to  Lord  Sand- 
wich,—  that  of  "Orange  Peel,"  given  to  Sir  Robert  Peel  by 


NICKNAMES.  363 

the  Irish,  the  inveterate  foes  of  the  House  of  Orange, — 
"the  stormy  Petrel  of  debate,"  given  to  Mr.  Bernal 
Osborne, — "  Finality  Russell,"  fastened  upon  Lord  John 
Russell  because  he  wished  a  certain  Reform  measux-e  to 
be  final, — "The  Dandy  Demagogue,"  given  to  Mr.  T.  S. 
Duncombe,  the  able  parliamentary  advocate  of  the  people, 
who  was  distinguished  by  the  remarkable  elegance  and 
finish  of  his  attire, —  the  unique  "  Dizzy,"  into  which  his 
enemies  condensed  the  name  of  the  'celebrated  Jewish 
premier, —  and  the  "Who?  Who?  Ministry,"  applied  to 
Lord  Derby's  Cabinet  in  1852, —  are  preeminently  signifi- 
cant and  telling.  Among  the  hundreds  of  American  polit- 
ical .nicknames,  there  are  many  which  are  not  remarkabl}'' 
expressive;  others,  like  "Old  Bullion"  and  "Old  Hickory," 
are  steeped  in  "  the  very  brine  of  conceit,"  and  sum  up 
a  character  as  if  by  inspiration. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  some  of  the  most  damaging 
nicknames  have  been  terms  or  epithets  wliich  were  origi- 
nally complimentary,  but  which,  used  sarcasticall}',  have 
been  associated  with  more  ridicule  or  odium  than  the  most 
opprobrious  epithets.  Men  hate  to  be  continually  reminded 
of  any  one  virtue  of  a  fellow-man, —  to  hear  the  changes 
rung  continually  upon  some  one  great  action  or  daring 
feat  he  has  performed.  It  seems,  indeed,  as  if  a  man 
whose  name  is  continually  dinned  in  our  ears,  coupled  with 
some  complimentary  epithet,  some  allusion  to  a  praise- 
worthy deed  which  he  once  did,  or  some  excellent  trait  of 
character,  must  be  distinguished  for  nothing  else.  Unless 
this  is  his  only  virtue,  why  all  this  fuss  and  pother  about 
it?  The  Athenians  banished  Aristides,  because  they  were 
tired  of  hearing  him  called  "the  Just." 

Some  parents  have  so  great  a  dread  of  nicknames  that 


364  WOEDS:    THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

they  tax  their  ingenuity  to  invent  for  their  children  a 
Christian  name  that  may  defy  nicking  or  abbreviation. 
With  Southey's  Doctor  Dove,  they  think  "  it  is  not  a  good 
thing  to  be  Tora'd  or  Bob'd,  Jack'd  or  Jim'd,  Sam'd  or 
Ben'd,  Natty 'd  or  Batty'd,  Neddy'd  or  Teddy'd,  Will'd  or 
Biird,  Dick'd  or  Nick'd,  Joe'd  or  Jerry'd,  as  you  go 
through  the  world."  The  good  doctor,  however,  had  no 
such  antipathy  to  the  shortening  of  female  names.  "  He 
never  called  any  woman  Mary,  though  Mare,  he  said,  being 
the  sea,  was  in  many  respects  too  emblematic  of  the  sex. 
It  was  better  to  use  a  synonym  of  better  omen,  and  Molly 
was  therefore  preferred,  as  being  soft.  If  he  accosted  a 
vixen  of  that  name  in  her  worst  temper,  he  Mollj'fied  her! 
On  the  contrary,  he  never  could  be  induced  to  substitute 
Sally  for  Sarah.  Sally,  he  said,  had  a  salacious  sound,  and, 
moreover,  it  reminded  him  of  rovers,  which  women  ought 
not  to  be.  Martha  he  called  Patty,  because  it  came  pat 
to  the  tongue.  Dorothy  remained  Dorothy,  because  it 
was  neither  fitting  that  women  should  be  made  Dolls,  nor 
I-dols!  Susan  with  him  was  always  Sue,  because  women 
were  to  be  sued,  and  Winnifred,  Winny,  because  they 
were  to  be  won."  * 

The  annoyance  which  may  be  given  to  a  man,  even  by 
an  apparently  meaningless  nickname,  which  sticks  to  him 
wherever  he  goes,  is  well  illustrated  by  a  storj'-  told  by 
Hazlitt  in  his  "  Convei'sations  with  Northcote,"  the  painter. 
A  village  baker  got,  he  knew  not  how,  the  name  of  "  Tiddy- 
doll."  He  was  teased  and  worried  by  it  till  it  almost  drove 
him  crazy.  The  bo^'s  hallooed  it  after  him  in  the  streets, 
and  poked  their  faces  into  his  shop- windows;  the  parrots 
echoed  the  name  as  he  passed  their  cages;    and  even  the 

*"Th8  Doctor,"  Vol.  VII. 


NICKNAMES.  365 

soldiers  took  it  up  (for  the  place  was  a  military  station), 
and  marched  to  parade,  beating  time  with  their  feet,  and 
singing  "  Tiddy-doll,  Tiddy-doll,"  as  they  passed  by  his  door. 
He  flew  out  upon  them  at  the  sound  with  inextinguishable 
fury,  was  knocked  down  and  rolled  into  the  kennel,  and 
got  up  in  an  agony  of  rage,  his  white  clothes  drabbled  and 
bespattered  with  mud.  A  respectable  and  friendly  gentle- 
man in  the  neighborhood,  who  pitied  his  weakness,  called 
him  into  his  house  one  day,  and  remonstrated  with  him 
on  the  subject.  He  advised  him  to  take  no  notice  of  his 
persecutors.  "  What,"  said  he,  "  does  it  signify?  Suppose 
ihey  do  call  you  '  Tiddy-doll ?  '  What  harm?"  ''There,— 
there  it  is  again!''  burst  forth  the  infuriated  baker;  "you've 
called  me  so  yourself.  You  called  me  in  on  purpose  to 
insult  me!"  And,  saying  this,  he  vented  his  rage  in  a 
torrent  of  abusive  epithets,  and  darted  out  of  the  house 
in  a  tempest  of  passion. 

The  readei's  of  Boswell  will  remember,  in  connection 
with  this  subject,  an  amusing  anecdote  told  of  Dr.  Johnson. 
Being  rudely  jostled  and  profanely-  addressed  by  a  stout 
fish-woman,  as  he  was  passing  through  Billingsgate,  he 
looked  straight  at  her,  and  said  deliberately,  "You  are  a 
triangle!"  which  made  her  swear  louder  than  before.  He 
then  called  her  "a  rectangle!  a  parallelogram!"  but  she 
was  more  voluble  still.  At  last  he  screamed  out,  "  You 
are  a  miserable,  wicked  hi/pothenuse!''  and  she  was  struck 
dumb.  Curran  had  a  similar  ludicrous  encounter  with 
a  fish-woman  at  Cork.  Taking  up  the  gauntlet,  when 
assailed  by  her  on  the  quay,  he  speedily  found  that  he  was 
overmatched,  and  that  he  had  nothing  to  do  but  to  beat 
a  retreat.  "This,  however,  was  to  be  done  with  dignity; 
so,  drawing  myself  up  disdainfully,  I  said,  'Madam,  I  scorn 


3G6  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

all  further  discourse  with  such  an  individual ! '  She  did  not 
understand  the  word,  and  thought  it,  no  doubt,  the  ver}'' 
hyperbole  of  opprobrium.  'Individual,  you  wagabond!' 
she  screamed,  '  what  do  you  mean  by  that?  Fm  no  more 
an  individual  than  your  mother  was!'  Never  was  victory 
more  complete.  The  whole  sisterhood  did  homage  to  me, 
and  I  left  the  quay  of  Cork  covered  with  glory." 


CHAPTER   XV. 

CURIOSITIES    OF    LANGUAGE. 

Langtiagc  is  the  dcpot-itory  of  Uic  acciiintilatcd  body  of  oxpcrioncc,  to 
which  all  former  ages  have  contributed  their  part,  and  which  is  the  inherit- 
ance of  all  yet  to  come.— J.  S.  Mill. 

Often  in  words  contemplated  singly  there  are  boundless  stores  of  moral 
and  historic  truth,  and  no  less  of  passion  and  imagination,  laid  up. —  Trench. 

A  THOUGHTFUL  English  writer  tells  us  that,  when 
-^-*-  about  nine  years  old,  he  learned  with  much  surprise 
that  the  word  "  sincere  "  was  derived  from  the  practice  of 
filling  up  flaws  in  furniture  with  wax,  whence  sine  cera 
came  to  mean  pure,  not  vamped  up  or  adulterated.  This 
explanation  gave  him  great  pleasure,  and  abode  in  his 
memory  as  having  first  shown  him  that  there  is  a  reason  in 
words  as  well  as  things.  There  are  few  cultivated  persons 
who  have  not  felt,  at  some  time  in  their  lives,  a  thrill  of 
surprise  and  delight  like  that  of  this  writer.  Throughout 
our  whole  lives,  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave,  the  stream  of 
our  history,  inner  and  outer,  runs  wonderfully  blended 
with  the  texture  of  the  words  we  use.  Dive  into  what 
su])jcct  we  will,  we  never  touch  the  bottom.  The  simplest 
prattle  of  a  child  is  but  the  light  surface  of  a  deep  sea  con- 
taining many  treasures.  It  would,  be  hard,  therefore,  to 
find  in  the  whole  range  of  inquiry  another  study  which  at 
onc^  is  so  fascinating,  and  so  richly  repays  the  labor,  as 
that  of  the  etymology  or  primitive  significations  of  words. 
It  is  an  epoch  in  one's  intellpctnal  history  when  he  first 
learns  that  words  are  living  and  not  dead  things, —  that  in 


368  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

these  children  of  llie  mind  are  incarnated  the  wit  and  wis- 
dom, the  poetic  fancies  and  the  deep  intuitions,  the  passion- 
ate longings  and  the  happy  or  sad  experiences  of  many 
generations.  The  discovery  is  "  like  the  dropping  of  scales 
from  his  eyes,  like  the  acquiring  of  another  sense,  or  the 
introduction  into  a  new  world ;  "  he  never  ceases  wondering 
at  the  moral  marvels  that  everywhere  reveal  themselves  to 
his  gaze.  To  eyes  thus  opened,  dictionaries,  instead  of 
seeming  huge  masses  of  word-lumber,  become  vast  store- 
houses of  historical  memorials,  than  which  none  are  more 
vital  in  spirit  or  more  pregnant  with  meaning.  It  is  not 
in  oriental  fairy-tales  only  that  persons  drop  pearls  every 
time  they  open  their  mouths;  like  Moliere's  Bourgeois 
GentilJioinme,  who  had  been  speaking  prose  all  his  life 
without  knowing  it,  we  are  dropping  gems  from  our  lips  in 
almost  every  hour  of  the  day.  Not  a  thought,  or  feeling,  or 
wish  can  we  utter  without  recalling,  by  an  unconscious 
sign  or  symbol,  some  historic  fact,  some  meraoiy  of  "  auld 
lang  syne,"  some  bj-^gone  custom,  some  vanished  supersti- 
tion, some  exploded  prejudice,  or  some  ethical  divination 
that  has  lost  its  charm.  Even  the  homeliest  and  most 
familiar  words,  the  most  hackneyed  phrases,  are  connected 
by  imperceptible  ties  with  the  hopes  and  fears,  the  reason- 
ings and  reflections,  of  bygone  men  and  times. 

Every  generation  of  men  inherits  and  uses  all  the  scien- 
tific wealth  of  the  past.  "  It  is  not  merely  the  great  and 
rich  in  the  intellectual  world  who  are  thus  blessed,  but  the 
humblest  inquirer,  while  he  puts  his  reasonings  into  words, 
benefits  by  the  labors  of  the  greatest.  When  he  counts  his 
little  wealth,  he  finds  he  has  in  his  hands  coins  which  bear 
the  image  and  superscription  of  ancient  and  modern  intel- 
lectual  dynasties,  and    that   in   virtue   of  this   possession 


CURIOSITIES   OF    LANGUAGE.  369 

acquisitions  are  in  liis  power,  solid  knowledge  within  his 
reach,  which  none  could  ever  have  attained  to,  if  it  were 
not  that  the  gold  of  truth  once  dug  out  of  the  mine  circu- 
lates more  and  more  widely  among  mankind."  Emerson 
beautifully  calls  language  "  fossil  poetry."  The  etymolo- 
gist, he  adds,  finds  the  deadest  word  to  have  been  once  a 
brilliant  picture.  "  As  the  limestone  of  the  continent  con- 
sists of  infinite  masses  of  the  shells  of  animalcules,  so 
language  is  made  up  of  images  or  tropes,  which  now,  in 
their  secondary  use,  have  long  since  ceased  to  remind  us  of 
their  poetic  origin." 

Not  only  is  this  true,  but  many  a  single  word,  as  Arch- 
bishop Trench  remarks,  is  itself  a  concentrated  poem,  in 
which  are  treasured  stores  of  poetical  thought  and  imagery. 
Examine  it  closely,  and  it  will  be  found  to  rest  -upon  some 
palpable  or  subtle  analogy  of  things  material  and  spiritual, 
showing  that,  however  trite  the  image  now,  the  man  who 
first  coined  the  word  was  a  poet.  The  older  the  word,  the 
profounder  and  more  beautiful  the  meanings  it  will  often 
be  found  to  inclose;  for  words  of  late  growth  speak  to  the 
head,  not  to  the  heart ;  thoughts  and  feelings  are  too  subtle 
for  new  words,  and  are  conveyed  only  by  those  about  which 
cluster  many  associations.  It  is  the  use  of  words  when  new 
and  fresh  from  the  lips  of  their  inventors,  before  their  vivid 
and  picturesque  meanings  have  faded  out  or  been  obscured 
by  their  many  secondary  significations,  that  gives  such  pic- 
torial beauty,  pith,  and  raciness,  to  the  early  writers;  "  and 
hence  to  recall  language,  to  restore  its  early  meanings,  to 
re-mint  it  in  novel  forms,  is  the  secret  of  all  effective 
writing  and  speaking, —  of  all  verbal  expression  which  is  to 
leave,  as  was  said  of  the  elnc^uence  of  Pericles,  stings  in  the 
minds  and  memories  of  the  hearers." 


370  -words;  tiieik  use  and  abuse. 

Language  is  not  only  "  fossil  poetry,"  but  it  is  also  fossil 
pliilosopliy,  fossil  ethics,  and  fossil  history.  As  in  the  pre- 
Adamite  rock  are  bound  up  and  preserved  the  vegetable 
and  animal  forms  of  ages  long  gone  by,  so  in  words  ax-e 
locked  up  truths  once  known  but  now  forgotten, —  the 
thoughts  and  feelings,  the  habits,  customs,  opinions,  virtues 
and  vices  of  men  long  since  in  their  graves.  Language  is, 
in  short,  "  the  depository  of  the  accumulated  body  of  experi- 
ence, to  which  all  former  ages  have  contributed  their  part, 
and  which  is  the  inheritance  of  all  yet  to  come."'  *  It  is 
"like  amber,  circulating  the  electric  spirit  of  truth,  and 
preserving  the  relics  of  ancient  wisdom."  f  Compared  with 
this  memorial  of  the  past,  these  records  of  ancient  and 
modern  intellectual  dynasties,  how  poor  are  all  other  mon- 
uments of  human  power,  perseverance,  skill,  or  genius! 
Unlike  the  works  of  individual  genius,  or  the  cuneiform 
inscriptions  which  are  found  in  oriental  countries  on  the 
crumbling  fragments  of  half-calcined  stone,  language  gives 
us  the  history  not  only  of  individuals,  but  of  nations;  not 
only  of  nations,  but  of  mankind.  It  is,  indeed,  "  an  admi- 
rable poem  on  the  history  of  all  ages;  a  living  monument 
on  which  is  written  the  genesis  of  human  thought.  Thus 
'  the  ground  on  which  our  civilization  stands  is  a  sacred 
one,  for  it  is  the  deposit  of  thought.  For  language,  as  it 
is  the  mirror,  so  it  is  the  product  of  reason,  and,  as  it 
embodies  thought,  so  it  is  the  child  of  thought.  In  it  are 
embodied  the  sparks  of  that  celestial  fire  which  from  a 
once  bright  centre  of  civilization  has  streamed  forth  over 
the  inhabited  earth,  and  which  now  already,  after  less  than 
three  myriads  of  years,  forms  a  galaxy  round  the  globe,  a 
chain  of  light  from  pole  to  pole.' " 

♦Mill's  "Logic."  +  Coleridge. 


CURIOSITIES    OF    LAXGLAGE.  3T1 

How  pregnant  with  insti-uotion  is  often  the  history  of 
a  single  word  I  Coleridge,  who  keenly  appreciated  the  sig- 
nificance of  words,  says  that  there  are  cases  where  more 
knowledge  of  more  value  may  be  conveyed  by  the  history 
of  a  word  than  by  the  history  of  a  campaign.  Sometimes 
the  germ  of  a  nation's  life, —  the  philosophy  of  some  politi- 
cal, "moral,  or  intellectual  movement  in  a  country, —  will 
be  found  coiled  up  in  a  single  word,  just  as  the  oak  is 
found  in  an  acorn.  The  word  "ostracize"  gives  us  a 
vivid  picture  of  the  Athenian  democracy,  and  of  the 
period  when  oyster-shells  were  used  for  ballots.  It  calls 
up  the  barbarity  which  held  an  election  of  candidates  for 
banishment;  the  arbitrary  power  which  enabled  the  vilest 
of  the  citizens,  from  mere  envy  of  the  reputation  of  the 
best  man  in  the  city,  to  make  him  an  exile;  and  the  utter 
lack  and  desecration  of  liberty,  while  its  forms  were 
fetiches  for  the  popular  worship.  The  fact  that  the  Arabs 
were  the  arithmeticians,  the  astronomers,  the  chemists, 
and  the  merchants  of  the  Middle  Ages,  is  shown  by  the 
words  we  have  borrowed  from  them, —  "algebra,"  "alma- 
nac," "cypher,"  "zero,"  "zenith,"  "alkali,"  "alcohol," 
"alchemy,"  "alembic,"  "magazine,"  "tariff,"  "cotton," 
"elixir";  and  so  that  the  monastic  system  originated  in 
the  Greek,  and  not  in  the  Latin  church,  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that  the  words  expressing  the  chief  elements  of  the 
system,  as  "  monk,"  "  monastery,"  "  anchorite,"  "  cenobite," 
"  ascetic,"  "  hermit,"  are  Greek,  not  Latin.  What  an 
amount  of  history  is  wrapped  up  in  the  word  "  Pagan  "  ! 
The  term,  we  learn  from  Gibbon,  is  remotely  derived  from 
//«^Tj,  in  the  Doric  dialect,  signifying  a  fountain;  and  the 
rural  neighborhood  which  frequented  the  same  derived  the 
common  appellation  of  Pagiis  and  "  Pagans."     Soon  "  Pa- 


372  AVOHDs;  tiikii:  usk  asd  abuse. 

gan"  and  "rural"  became  nearly  synonymous,  and  the 
meaner  peasants  acquired  that  name  which  has  been  cor- 
rupted into  "  peasant"  in  the  modern  languages  of  Europe. 
All  non-military  people  soon  came  to  be  branded  as  Pagans. 
The  Christians  were  the  soldiers  of  Christ;  their  adversa- 
ries, who  refused  the  "  sacrament,"  or  military  oath  of  bap- 
tism, might  deserve  the  metaphorical  name  of  Pagans. 
Christianity  gradually  filled  the  cities  of  the  empire;  the 
old  religion  retired  and  languished,  in  the  time  of  Pru- 
dentius,  in  obscure  villages.  From  Pagus,  as  a  root,  comes 
jjugias,  first  a  villager,  then  a  rural  laborer,  then  a  serv- 
ant, lastly  a  "  page."  Pugina,  first  the  inclosed  square  of 
cultivated  land  near  a  village,  graduated  into  the  ''  page  " 
of  a  book.  Pagare,  from  denoting  the  "  field  service  "  that 
compensated  the  provider  of  food  and  raiment,  was  ap- 
plied eventually  to  every  form  in  which  the  changes  of 
society  required  the  benefited  to  "  pay  "  for  what  they  re- 
ceived. Again,  when  a  Scotchman  speaks  of  his  "shackle- 
bone,"  he  not  only  conveys  an  idea  of  his  wrist,  but 
discovers  by  this  very  term  that  slavery,  or  vassalage,  con- 
tinued so  long  in  Scotland  as  to  impress  itself  indelibly  on 
the  language  of  the  country. 

Often  where  history  is  utterly  dumb  concerning  the 
past,  language  speaks.  The  discovery  of  the  foot-print 
on  the  sand  did  not  more  certainly  prove  to  Robinson 
Crusoe  that  the  island  of  which  he  had  fancied  himself  the 
sole  inhabitant  contained  a  brother  man,  than  the  simi- 
larity of  the  inflections  in  the  speech  of  different  peoples 
proves  their  brotherhood.  Were  all  the  histories  of  Eng- 
land swept  from  existence,  the  study  of  its  language, — 
developing  the  fact  that  the  basis  of  the  language  is  Saxon, 
that  the  names  of  the  prominent    objects    of  nature   are 


CURIOSITIES    OF    LAXGUAGE.  373 

Celtic,  the  terms  of  war  and  government  Norman-French, 
the  ecclesiastical  terras  Latin, —  would  enable  us  to  recon- 
struct a  large  part  of  the  story  of  the  past,  as  it  even  now 
enables  us  to  verify  many  of  the  statements  of  the  chron- 
iclers. Humboldt,  in  his  "  Cosmos,"  eulogizes  the  study 
of  words  as  one  of  the  richest  sources  of  historical  knowl- 
edge; and  it  is  probable  that  what  comparative  philology, 
yet  in  its  infancy,  has  already  discovered,  will  compel  a 
rewriting  of  the  history  of  the  world.  Even  now  it  has 
thrown  light  on  many  of  the  most  perplexing  problems  of 
religion,  history,  and  ethnography;  and  it  seems  destined 
to  triumphs  of  which  we  can  but  dimly  apprehend  the 
consequences.  On  the  stone  tablets  of  the  universe  God's 
own  finger  has  written  the  changes  which  millions  of 
years  have  wrought  on  the  mountain  and  the  plain;  and 
in  the  fluid  air,  which  he  coins  into  spoken  words,  man 
has  preserved  forever  the  grand  facts  of  his  past  history 
and  the  grand  processes  of  his  inmost  soul.  "  Nations  and 
languages  against  dynasties  and  treaties,"  is  the  cry  which 
is  remodelling  the  map  of  Europe;  and  in  our  country, 
comparative  philologists, —  to  their  shame  be  it  said, — 
have  labored  with  satanic  zeal  to  prove  the  impossibility 
of  a  common  origin  of  languages  and  races,  in  order  to 
justify,  by  scientific  arguments,  the  theory  of  slavery.  It 
has  been  said  that  the  interpretation  of  one  word  in  the 
Vedas  fifty  years  earlier  would  have  saved  many  Hindoo 
widows  from  being  burned  alive;  and  now  that  the  phi- 
lologists of  Germany  and  England  have  shown  that  the 
iron  network  of  caste,  which  for  centuries  has  hindered 
the  development  of  India,  is  not  a  religious  institution, 
and  has  no  authority  in  their  sacred  writings,  but  is  the 
invention  of  an  arrogant  and  usurping  priesthood, —  or,  at 


374  woiiDs;   thkiu  use  and  abuse. 

best,  an  eiToneous  tradition,  clue  to  the  lialf-knowledfje 
or  to  the  imposture  of  the  native  pundits, —  the  British 
government  will  be  able  to  inflict  penalties  for  the  ob- 
servance of  the  rules  of  caste,  and  thus  to  relieve  India  from 

the  greatest  clog  on  its  progress. 

CHANGES    IN    THE    MEANING    OF   WORDS. 

Language,  as  it  daguerreotypes  human  thought,  shares, 
as  we  have  seen,  in  all  the  vicissitudes  of  man.  It  mir- 
rors all  the  changes  in  the  character,  tastes,  customs,  and 
opinions  of  a  people,  and  shows  with  unerring  faithful- 
ness whether,  and  in  what  degree,  they  advance  or  recede 
in  culture  or  morality.  As  new  ideas  germinate  in  the 
mind  of  a  nation,  it  will  demand  new  forms  of  expression; 
on  the  other  hand,  a  petrified  and  mechanical  national 
mind  will  as  surely  betray  itself  in  a  petrified  and  me- 
chanical language.     It  is  by  no  accident  or  caprice  that 

"  Words,  whilom  flouriehing, 
Pass  now  no  more,  but  banished  from  the  court. 
Dwell  with  disgrace  among  the  vulgar  sort; 
And  those  which  eld's  strict  doom  did  disallow. 
And  damn  for  bullion,  go  for  current  now." 

Often  with  the  lapse  of  time  the  meaning  of  a  word 
changes  imperceptibly,  until  after  some  centuries  it  be- 
comes the  very  opposite  of  what  it  once  was.  To  dis- 
inter these  old  meanings  out  of  the  alluvium  and  drift 
of  ages  affords  as  much  pleasure  to  the  linguist  as  to 
disinter  a  fossil  does  to  the  geologist. 

An  exact  knowledge  of  the  changes  of  signification 
which  words  have  undergone  is  not  merely  a  source  of 
pleasure;  it  is  absolutely  indispensable  to  the  full  under- 
standing of  old  authors.  Thus,  for  example,  Milton  and 
Thomson  use  "horrent"  and  "horrid"  for  bristling,  e.(/., 


CURIOSITIES    OF    LANGUAGE.  375 

'•With  dangling  ice  all  horrid."' 

Milton  speaks  of  a  "savage"  (meaning  woody,  silva)  hWX, 
and  of  "amiable"  (meaning  lovely)  fruit.  Again,  in  the 
well  known  lines  of  the  "Allegro,"  where,  Milton  says, 
amongst  the  cheerful  sights  of  rural   morn, 

"And  every  shepherd  tells  his  tale 
Under  the  hawthorn  in  the  vale," — 

the  words  "tells  his  tale"  do  not  mean  that  he  is  ro- 
mancing or  making  love  to  the  milkmaid,  but  that  he  is 
counting  his  slwep  as  they  pass  the  hawthorn, —  a  natural 
and  familiar  occupation  of  shepherds  on  a  summer's 
morning.  The  primary  meaning  of  "tale"  is  to  count  or 
number,  as  in  the  German  zahlen.  It  is  thus  used  in 
the  Book  of  Exodus,  which  states  that  the  Israelites  were 
compelled  to  deliver  their  "  tale  of  bricks."  In  the  English 
"tale"  and  in  the  French  code  the  secondary  meaning 
has  supplanted  the  first,  though  we  still  speak  of  "  keep- 
ing tally,"  of  "untold  gold,"  and  say,  "Here  is  the  sum 
twice-told." 

Again,  Milton's  use  of  the  word  "jolly"  in  the  follow- 
ing lines  from  his  "  Sonnet  to  the  Nightingale,"  strikingly 
illustrates  the  disadvantages  under  which  poetry  in  a 
living,  and  consequently  ever-changing,  language,  labors: 

"Thou  with  fresh  hope  the  lover's  heart  doth  fill, 
While  the  jolly  hours  lead  on  propitious  May." 

Though  we  may  know  the  meaning  which  the  word  bore 
a  little  more  than  two  and  a  half  centuries  ago,  yet  it  is 
impossible  entirely  to  banish  from  the  mind  the  vulgar 
associations  which  have  gathered  round  it  since. 

It  has  been  said  that  one  of  the  arts  of  a  great  poet  or 
prose-writer,  who  wishes   to  add   emphasis   to  his  style, — 


370  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

to  bring  out  all  the  latent  forces  of  liis  native  tongue, — 
will  often  consist  in  reconnecting  a  word  with  its  original 
derivation,  in  not  suffering  it  to  forget  itself  and  its 
father's  house,  though  it  would.  This  Milton  does  some- 
times with  signal  effect;  but  in  the  great  majority  of 
cases  his  meaning  becomes  obscure  to  the  unlearned  reader. 
In  a  great  number  of  cases  we  must  interpret  his  words 
rather  by  their  classical  meanings  than  by  their  English 
use.  Thus  in  "  Paradise  Lost,"  when  Satan  speaks  of  his 
having  been  pursued  by  "  Heaven's  afflicting  thunder,"  the 
poet  uses  the  word  "  afflicting "  in  its  original  primary 
sense  of  striking  down  bodily.  Properly  the  word  denotes 
a  state  of  mind  or  feeling  only,  and  is  not  used  to-day 
in  a  concrete  sense.  So  when  Milton,  at  the  opening  of 
the  same  poem,  speaks  of 

"The  secret  top 
Of  Oreb  or  of  Sinai," 

the  meaning  of  the  word  "secret"  is  not  that  of  the  Eng- 
lish adjective,  but  is  remote,  apart,  lonely,  as  in  Virgil's 
secretosque  pios.  The  absurdity  of  supposing  the  word 
to  be  the  same  as  our  ordinary  adjective  led  Bentley, 
among  many  ridiculous  "  improvements "  of  Milton's  Ian-  . 
guage,  to  change  it  to  "  sacred."  Again,  the  word  "  recol- 
lect" is  used  in  its  etymological  sense  in  these  lines  from 
"Paradise  Lost": 

"But  he,  his  wonted  pride 
Soon  recollecting,  with  high  words,"  etc. 

So  Milton  uses  the  woi'd  "  astonished  "  in  its  etymological 
sense  of  "  thunderstruck,"  aftonitus,  as  when  he  makes 
Satan  say  that  his  associates 

"  Lie  thus  adoiiis/ied  on  the  oblivious  pool." 

Holland,  in   his    translation    of   Livy,   speaks   of  a  knave 


CURIOSITIES    OF    LAXGlAtJE  377 

who  threw  some  heavy  stones  upon  a  ceitain  kinj^', 
"  whereof  the  one  smote  the  king  upon  his  head,  the 
other  astonished  his  shoulder." 

Shakespeare,  also,  not  un frequently  uses  words  in  their 
classical  sense.     Thus  when  Cleoiiatra  speaks  of 

"  Such  gifts  as  we  greet  modern  friends  withal," 

"  modern  "  is  used  in  the  sense  of  "  modal  "  (from  modus,  a 
fashion  or  manner);  a  modern  friend,  compared  with  a 
true  friend,  being  what  the  fashion  of  a  thing  is,  com- 
pared with  the  substance.  So, —  as  De  Quincey,  to  whom 
we  owe  this  explanation,  has  shown, — when  in  the  famous 
picture  of  life,  "All  the  World's  a  Stage,"  the  justice  is 
described  as 

"  Full  of  wise  saws  and  modern  instances," 

the  meaning  is  not  "full  of  wise  sayings  and  modern 
illustrations,"  but  full  of  proverbial  maxims  of  conduct 
and  of  trivial  arguments;  i.e.,  of  petty  distinctions  that 
never  touch  the  point  at  issue.  "  Instances "  is  from  in- 
stantia,  which  the  monkish  and  scholastic  writers  always 
used  in  the  sense  of  an  argument.  When  in  "Julius 
Caesar"  we  read, — 

"  And  come  down 
With  fearful  bravery,  tliinking  by  this  face 
To  fasten  in  our  thoughts  that  they  have  courage," 

we  must  not  attach  to  "bravery"  its  modern  sense;  and  the 
same  remark  applies  to  the  word  "  extravagant"  in  the  fol- 
lowing passage  from  "Hamlet": 

"Whether  in  sea  or  fire,  in  earth  or  air, 
The  extravagant  and  erring  spirit  hies 
To  his  confine,"  etc. 

"Courage"  is  "good  heart."     "Anecdote," — from  the 
Greek  dv  (not),  ix  (out),  and  dvra  (given), —  meant  once  a 


378  words;  tueir  use  asu  abuse. 

fact  not  given  out  or  published;  now  it  means  a  short, 
amusing  story.  Procopius,  a  Greek  historian  in  the  reign 
of  Justinian,  is  said  to  have  coined  the  word.  Not  daring, 
for  fear  of  torture  and  death,  to  speak  of  some  living  per- 
sons as  they  deserved,  he  wrote  a  work  which  he  called 
"  Anecdotes,"  or  a  "  Secret  History."  The  instant  an  anec- 
dote is  published,  it  belies  its  title;  it  is  no  longer  an 
anecdote.  "Allowance"  formerly  was  used  to  denote 
praise  or  approval;  as  when  Shakespeare  says  in  "Troilus 
and  Cressida," 

"A  stirring  dwarf  we  do  alloivance  give 
Before  a  sleeping  giant." 

"  To  prevent,"  which  now  means  to  hinder  or  obstruct,  sig- 
nified, in  its  Latin  etymology,  to  anticipate,  to  get  the  start 
of,  and  is  thus  used  in  the  Old  Testament.  "  Girl "  once 
designated  a  young  person  of  either  sex.  "  Widow "  was 
applied  to  men  as  well  as  women.  "Sagacious"  once 
meant  quick-smelling,  as  in  the  line 

"Tlie  hound  sagacious  of  the  tainted  prey." 

"  Rascal,"  according  to  Vei'stegan,  primarily  meant  an 
"  il-favoured,  lean,  and  worthelesse  deer."  Thus  Shake- 
speare : 

"Horns!    the  noblest  deer  hath  them  as  huge  as  the  rascal." 

Afterward  it  denoted  the  common  people,  the  plehs  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  popidus.  A  "  natui-alist "  was  once  a 
person  who  rejected  revealed  truth,  and  believed  only  in  nat- 
ural religion.  He  is  now  an  investigator  of  nature  and  lipr 
laws,  and  often  a  believer  in  Christianity.  "Blackguards" 
were  formerly  the  scullions,  turnspits,  and  other  meaner 
retainers  in  a  great  household,  who,  when  a  change  was 
made  from  one  residence  to  another,  accompanied  and  took 


CURIOSITIES   OF   LANGUAGE.  379 

care  of  the  pots,  pans,  and  other  kitchen  utensils,  by  which 
they  were  smutted,  AVebster,  in  his  play  of  "The  White 
Devil,"  speaks  of  "  a  lousy  knave,  that  within  these  twenty 
years  rode  with  the  '  black  guard '  in  the  Duke's  carriage, 
amongst  spits  and  dripping-pans."  "  Artillery,"  which  to- 
day means  the  heavy  ordnance  of  modern  warfare,  was  two 
or  three  centuries  ago  applied  to  any  engines  for  throwing 
missiles,  even  to  the  bow  and  arrow.  "  Punctual,"  which 
now  denotes  exactness  in  keeping  engagements,  formerly 
applied  to  space  as  well  as  to  time.  Sir  Thomas  Browne 
speaks  of  "  a  '  punctual '  truth  "  ;  and  we  read  in  other 
writers  of  "a  '  punctual '  relation,"  or  "  description," 
meaning  a  particular  or  circumstantial  relation  or  descrip- 
tion. 

"  Bombast,"  now  swelling  talk,  inflated  diction  without 
substance,  was  originally  cotton  padding.  It  is  derived 
from  the  Low  Latin,  bonihax,  cotton.  "Chemist"  once 
meant  the  same  as  alchemist.  "  Polite  "  originally  meant 
polished,  Cudworth  speaks  of  "polite  bodies,  as  looking- 
glasses."  "Tidy,"  which  now  means  neat,  well  arranged, 
is  derived  from  the  old  English  word  "tide,"  meaning  time, 
as  in  eventide.  "  Tidy  "  (German,  zeitig)  is  timely,  seasona- 
ble. As  things  in  right  time  are  apt  to  be  in  the  right 
place,  the  transition  in  the  meaning  of  the  word  is  a  natu- 
ral one,  "Caitiff"  formerly  meant  captive,  being  derived 
from  rajtlirus  through  the  Norman- 1' reach.  The  change  of 
signiiication  points  to  the  tendency  of  slavery  utterly  to 
debase  the  character, —  to  transform  the  man  into  a  cow- 
ardly miscreant.  In  like  manner  "  miscreant,"  once  simply 
a  misbeliever,  and  applied  to  the  most  virtuous  as  well  as 
to  the  vilest,  points  to  the  deep-felt  conviction  that  a  wrong 
belief  leads  to  wrong  living.      Thus  Gibbon:    "The  emper- 


380  AVOIiDS;    TIIEIU    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

or's  generosity  to  the  '  miscreant '  [  Soliman  ]  was  inter- 
preted as  treason  to  the  Christian  cause."  "Thought,"  in 
early  English,  was  anxious  care;  e.g.,  "  Take  no  '  thought' 
for  your  life  "(Matt,  vi,  25).  "Thing"  primarily  meant 
discourse,  then  solemn  discussion,  council,  court  of  justice, 
cause,  matter  or  subject  of  discourse.  The  "  husting  "  was 
originally  the  house-thing,  or  domestic  court. 

"  Coquets  "  were  once  male  as  well  as  female.  "  Usury," 
which  now  means  taking  illegal  or  excessive  intei'est, 
denoted,  at  first,  the  taking  of  any  interest,  however  small. 
A  "tobacconist"  was  formerly  a  smoker,  not  a  seller,  of 
tobacco.  "  Corpse,"  now  a  body  from  which  the  breath  of 
life  has  departed,  once  denoted  the  body  of  the  living  also; 
as  in  Surrey, 

"A  valiant  corpse,  where  force  and  beauty  met." 

We  have  already  spoken  of  the  striking  change  which  the 
word  "incomprehensible"  has  undergone  within  the  last 
'three  centuries. 

"Wit,"  now  used  in  a  more  limited  sense,  at  first  signi- 
fied the  mental  powers  collectively;  e.g.,  "Will  puts  in 
practice  what  the  wit  deviseth."  Later  it  came  to  denote 
quickness  of  apprehension,  beauty  or  elegance  in  composi- 
tion, and  Pope  defined  it  as 

"  Nature  to  advantage  dressed, 
What  oft  was  thought,  but  ne'er  so  well  expressed." 

Another  meaning  was  a  man  of  talents  or  genius.  The 
word  "parts,"  a  hundred  years  ago,  was  used  to  denote 
genius  or  talents.  Horace  Walpole,  in  one  of  his  letters, 
says  of  Goldsmith  that  "  he  was  an  idiot,  with  once  or 
twice  a  fit  of  'parts.'"  The  word  "loyalty"  has  under- 
gone a  marked  change  within  a  few  centuries.     Originally 


CURIOSITIES   OF   LANGUAGE.  381 

it  meant  in  English,  as  in  French,  fair  dealing,  fidelity  to 
engagements;  now  it  means,  in  England,  fidelity  to  the 
throne,  and,  in  the  United  States,  to  the  Union  or  the 
Constitution.  "Relevant,"  which  formerly  meant  reliev- 
ing or  assisting,  is  now  used  in  the  sense  of  "relative"  or 
"  relating "  to,  with  which,  from  a  similarity  of  sound, 
though  without  the  least  etymological  connection,  it  ap- 
pears to  have  been  confounded.  The  word  "exorbitant" 
once  meant  deviating  from  a  track  or  orbit;  it  is  now 
used  exclusively  in   the  sense  of  excessive. 

The  word  "  coincide "  was  primarily  a  mathematical 
term.  If  one  mathematical  point  be  superposed  upon  an- 
other, or  one  straight  line  upon  another  between  the  same 
two  points,  the  two  points  in  the  first  case  and  the  two 
lines  in  the  latter  are  said  to  coincide.  The  word  was  soon 
applied  figuratively  to  identity  of  opinion,  but,  according 
to  Prof.  Marsh,  was  not  fully  popularized,  at  least  in 
America,  till  1826.  On  the  Fourth  of  July  in  that  year, 
the  semi-centennial  jubilee  of  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence, Thomas  Jefferson,  the  author  of  that  manifesto,  and 
John  Adams,  its  principal  champion  on  the  floor  of  Con- 
gress, both  also  Ex-Presidents,  died;  and  this  fact  was 
noticed  all  over  the  world,  and  especially  in  the  United 
States,  as  a  remarkable  "  coincidence."  The  death  of  Ex- 
President  Monroe,  also,  on  the  Fourth  of  July  five  years 
after,  gave  increased  currency  to  the  word.  Our  late  civil 
war  has  led  to  some  striking  mutations  in  the  meaning 
of  words.  "Contraband,"  from  its  general  signification  of 
any  article  whose  importation  or  exportation  is  prohib- 
ited by  law,  became  limited  to  a  fugitive  slave  within  the 
United  States'  military  lines.     "  Secede  "  and  "  secession," 


382  woiiDs;  their  use  and  abuse. 

"  confederate"  and  "  confederacy,"  have  also  acquired  new 
special  meanings. 

DEGRADATION    OF    "WOKDS. 

Another  striking  characteristic  of  words  is  their  ten- 
dency to  contract  in  form  and  degenerate  in  meaning. 
Sometimes  they  ai-e  ennobled  and  purified  in  signification; 
but  more  frequently  they  deteriorate,  and  from  an  hon- 
orable fall  into  a  dishonorable  meaning.  I  will  first 
note  a  few  examples  of  the  former: — "Humilit}^"  with  the 
Greeks  and  Romans,  meant  meanness  of  spirit;  "Paradise," 
in  oriental  tongues,  meant  only  a  royal  park;  "regenera- 
tion "  was  spoken  by  the  Greeks  only  of  the  earth  in  the 
springtime,  and  of  the  recollection  of  forgotten  knowledge; 
"sacrament"  and  "mystery"  are  words  "fetched  from  the 
very  dregs  of  paganism  "  to  set  forth  the  great  truths  of 
our  redemption.  On  the  other  hand,  "thief"  (Anglo- 
Saxon,  theoiv)  formerly  signified  only  one  of  the  servile 
classes;  and  "villain"  or  "  villein,"  meant  peasant, —  the 
serf  who,  under  the  feudal  system,  was  adscriptus  ghbce. 
The  scorn  of  the  landholders,  the  half-barbarous  aristoc- 
racy, for  these  persons,  led  them  to  ascribe  to  them  the 
most  hateful  qualities,  some  of  which  their  degrading  situ- 
ation doubtless  tended  to  foster.  Thus  the  word  "  villein  " 
became  gradually  associated  with  ideas  of  crime  and  guilt, 
till  at  length  it  became  a  synonym  for  knaves  of  every 
class  in  society.  A  "menial"  was  one  of  the  many; 
"insolent"  meant  unusual;  "silly,"  blessed, —  the  infant 
Jesus  being  termed  by  an  old  English  poet  "  that  harmless 
'silly'  babe";  "  ofticious "  signified  ready  to  do  kindly 
offices.     "  Demure  "  was  used  once  in  a  good  sense,  with- 


CURIOSITIES   OF   LANGUAGE.  383 

out  the  insinuation  which  is  now  almost  latent  in  it,  that 
the  external  shows  of  modesty  and  sobriety  rest  on  no  cor- 
responding realities.  "  Facetious,"  which  now  has  the 
sense  of  buffoonish,  originally  meant  urbane.  "  Idiot," 
from  the  Greek,  originally  signified  only  a  private  man,  as 
distinguished  from  an  office-holder.  '"Homely"  formerly 
meant  secret  and  familiar;  and  "brat."  now  a  vulgar  and 
contemptuous  word,  had  anciently  a  very  different  signifi- 
cation, as  in  the  fc^llowing  lines  from  an  old  hymn  by 
Gascoigne: 

"O  Israel,  ()  lion?i'hol(i  of  the  Lorl, 
()  Abriilium's  brats,  O  brood  of  blessed  seed, 
O  chosen  sheep  that  loved  the  Lord  indeed." 

"  Imp"  once  meant  graft;  Bacon  speaks  of  "those  most 
virtuous  and  goodly  young  imps,  the  Duke  of  Sussex  and 
his  brother."  A  "boor"  was  once  only  a  farmer;  a 
"scamp"  a  camp  deserter.  "Speculation"  first  meant  the 
sense  of  sight;  as  in  Shakespeare: 

"Thou  hast  no  spcctilation  in  those  eyes." 

Next  it  was  metaphorically  transferred  to  mental  vision, 
and  finally  denoted,  without  a  metaphor,  the  reflections 
and  theories  of  philosophers.  From  the  domain  of  philoso- 
phy it  has  finally  travelled  downward  to  the  offices  of  stock- 
jobbers, share-brokers,  and  all  men  who  get  their  living  by 
their  wits,  instead  of  by  the  sweat  of  their  brows.  So 
"  craft "  at  first  meant  ability,  skill,  or  dexterity.  The 
origin  of  the  term,  according  to  Wedgewood,  is  seen  in  the 
notion  of  seizing,  expressed  by  the  Italian,  f/roffiare,  Welsh, 
crojf',  a  hook,  brace,  holdfast.  The  term  is  then  applied  to 
seizing  with  the  mind,  as  in  the  Latin  term  "apprehend," 
"  com[)relieiKl,"  from  jinliniderc,  to  seize  in  a  material  way. 


384  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

"Cunning"  once  conveyed  no  idea  of  sinister  or  crooked 
wisdom.  "  The  tliree  Persons  of  the  Trinity,"  says  a  rever- 
ent writer  of  the  fifteenth  century,  "  are  of  equal  cunning." 
Bacon,  a  century  later,  uses  the  word  in  its  present  sense  of 
fox-like  wisdom;  and  Locke  calls  it  "the  ape  of  wisdom." 
"  Vagabond  "  is  a  word  whose  etymology  conveys  no  re- 
proach. It  denoted  at  first  only  a  wanderer.  But  as  men 
who  have  no  homes  are  apt  to  become  loose,  unsteady,  and 
reckless  in  their  habits,  the  term  has  degenerated  into  its 
present  signification. 

"  Paramour  "  meant  originally  only  lover;  a  "minion" 
was  a  favorite;  and  "  knave,"  the  lowest  and  most  contempt- 
uous term  we  can  use  when  insulting  another,  signified 
originall}^  as  knahe  still  does  in  German,  a  boy.  Subse- 
quently, it  meant  servant;  thus  Paul,  in  Wicliffe's  ver- 
sion of  the  New  Testament,  reverently  terms  himself  "  a 
'knave'  of  Jesus  Christ."  A  similar  parallel  to  this  is  the 
word  "  varlet,"  which  is  the  same  as  "  valet."  "  Retaliate," 
from  the  Latin  re  (back)  and  talis  (such),  naturally  means 
to  pay  back  in  kind,  or  such  as  we  have  received.  But  as, 
according  to  Sir  Thomas  Moi'e,  men  write  their  injuries  in 
marble,  the  kindnesses  done  them  in  sand,  the  word  "  retal- 
iate" is  applied  only  to  offences  or  indignities,  and  never  to 
favors.  The  word  "  resent,"  to  feel  in  return,  has  under- 
gone a  similar  deterioration.  A  Frenchman  would  sa}^,  "  // 
'ressentit'  nne  vive  doideur,''  for  "  He  felt  acute  pain"; 
whereas  we  use  the  word  only  to  express  the  sentiment  of 
anger. 

So  "animosity,"  which  etymologically  means  only  spirit- 
edness,  is  now  applied  to  only  one  kind  of  vigor  and  activity, 
that  displayed  in  enmity  and  hate.  "  Defalcation,"  from 
the  Latin,  falx,  a  sickle  or  scythe,  is  properly  a  cutting  off 


CLKIOSITIES    OF    LANGUAGE.  385 

or  down,  a  iJi-uniiiLf  or  retrenflunont.  Thus  Addison:  "The 
tca-lable  is  set.  forth  with  its  u^ual  hill  of  fare,  an<l  with- 
out any  defalcation/'  To-day  we  read  of  a  "defalcation  in 
the  revenue,"  or  "  in  a  treasurer's  accounts,"  by  which  is 
nieitnt  a  decrease  in  the  amount  of  the  revenue,  or  in  the 
moneys  accounted  for,  irrespective  of  the  cause, —  a  falling 
off.  This  erroneous  use  of  the  word  is  probably  due  to  a 
confusion  of  it  with  the  expression  "  fall  away,"  and  with 
the  noun  "defaulter."  Between  the  first  word  and  either  of 
the  last  two,  however,  there  is  not  the  slightest  etymologi- 
cal relationship.  "Chaffer,"  to  talk  much  and  idly,  prima- 
rily meant  to  buy,  to  make  a  bargain,  to  higgle  or  dispute 
about  a  bargain.  "Gossip"  (God-akin)  once  meant  a 
sponsor  in  haptism.  "Simple"  and  "simplicity"  have 
sadly  degenerated  in  meaning.  A  "  simple  "  fellow,  once 
a  man  si>ie  plica  (without  fold,  free  from  duplicity),  is 
now  one  who  lacks  shrewdness,  and  is  easily  cheated  or 
duped. 

There  are  some  words  which,  though  not  used  in  an 
absolutely  unfavorable  sense,  yet  require  a  qualifying 
adjective  to  be  understood  favorably.  Thus,  if  a  man  is 
said  to  be  noted  for  his  "curiosity,"  a  prying,  impertinent, 
not  a  legitimate,  curiosity  is  supposed  to  be  meant.  So 
"critic"  and  "criticise"  are  commonly  associated  with  a 
carping,  fault-finding  spirit.  "Lust"  has  undergone  a 
signal  deterioration.  In  Chaucer  it  is  used  both  as  a  noun 
and  a  verb,  and  signifies  wish,  desire,  pleasure,  enjoyment, 
without  any  evil  connotation.  "  Parson  "  {persona  eccle- 
sia')  had  originally  no  undertone  of  contempt.  In  the 
eighteenth  century  it  had  become  a  nickname  of  scorn;  and 
it  was  at  a  party  of  a  dozen  parsons  that  the  Earl  of  Sand- 
wich won  his  wager,  that  no  one  among  them  had  brought 


380  AvoKDs;  Tin: III  use  and  aijuse. 

his  prayer-book  or  forgotten  his  corkscrew.  "  Fellow  "  was 
originally  a  term  of  i^espect, —  at  least,  there  was  in  it  no 
subaudition  of  contempt;  now  it  is  suggestive  of  worthless- 
ness,  if  not  of  positivel}^  bad  morals.  Shakespeare  did  not 
mean  to  disparage  Yorick,  the  jester,  when  he  said  that  "he 
was  a  'fellow'  of  infinite  jest";  Pope,  on  the  other  hand, 
tells  us,  a  century  or  more  later,  that 

"Worth  makes  the  man,  and  want  of  it  the  fellow.'''' 

"  By  a  '  fast '  man,  I  presume  3^ou  mean  a  '  loose '  one," 
said  Sir  Robert  Inglis  to  one  who  was  describing  a  rake. 
Of  all  the  words  which  have  degenerated  from  their  origi- 
nal meaning,  the  most  remarkable  is  the  term  "  dunce,"  of 
the  history  of  which  Archbishop  Trench  has  given  a  strik- 
ing account  in  his  work  on  "  The  Study  of  Words,"  In  the 
Middle  Ages  certain  theologians,  educated  in  the  cathedral 
and  cloister  schools  founded  by  Charlemagne  and  his  suc- 
cessors, were  called  Schoolmen.  Though  they  were  men  of 
great  acuteness  and  subtlety  of  intellect,  their  works,  at  the 
revival  of  learning,  ceased  to  be  popular,  and  it  was  consid- 
ered a  mark  of  intellectual  progress  and  advance  to  have 
thrown  off  their  yoke.  Some  persons,  however,  still  clung 
to  these  Schoolmen,  especially  to  Duns  Scotus,  the  great 
teacher  of  the  Franciscan  order;  and  many  times  an  adher- 
ent of  the  old  learning  would  seek  to  strengthen  his 
position  by  an  appeal  to  its  great  doctor,  familiarly  called 
Duns;  while  his  opponents  would  contemptuously  rejoin, 
"  Oh,  you  ai'e  a  '  Duns-man,'  "  or,  more  briefly,  "You  are  a 
'  Duns.'  "  As  the  new  learning  was  enlisting  more  and 
more  of  the  scholarship  of  the  age  on  its  side,  the  title 
became  more  and  more  a  term  of  scorn;  and  thus,  from 
that   lonii    extinct    conflict   between  the  old  and    the  new 


CURIOSITIES    OF    LANGUAGE.  387 

learniii<f,  tlie  inediifval  and  tlie  modern  theology,  we  inherit 
the  words  "  dunce"  and  "  duncery."  The  lot  of  poor  Duns, 
as  the  Archbishop  observes,  was  certainly  a  hard  one.  Tliat 
the  name  of  "  the  Subtle  Doctor,"  as  he  was  called,  one  of 
the  keenest  and  most  subtle-witted  of  men, —  according  to 
Hooker,  "the  wittiest  of  the  school  divines," — should 
become  a  synonym  for  stupidity  and  obstinate  dulness,  was 
a  fate  of  which  even  his  bitterest  enemies  could  never  have 
dreamed. 

COMMON    WORDS    WITH    CURIOUS    BERIVATIOTfS. 

"  Bit "  is  that  which  has  been  bit  off,  and  exactly  corre- 
sponds to  the  word  "  morsel,"  used  in  the  same  sense,  and 
derived  from  the  Latin,  mordere,  to  bite.  "  Bankrupt "  means 
literally  broken  bench.  It  was  the  custom  in  the  twelfth 
and  thirteenth  centuries  for  the  Lombard  merchants  to 
expose  their  wares  for  sale  in  the  market-place  on  benches. 
When  one  of  their  number  failed,  all  the  other  merchants 
set  upon  him,  drove  him  from  the  market,  and  "  broke"  his 
"  bench  "  to  pieces.  Banco  rotto,  the  Italian  for  bench-broken, 
becomes  hanqueroiite  in  French,  and  in  English  "  bankrupt." 
To  the  Lombard  merchants,  who  flocked  to  England  in 
the  thirteenth  century,  we  owe  also  the  words  "bank," 
"  debtor,"  "  creditor,"  "  usance  "  (the  old  word  for  interest), 
"journal,"  "diary,"  "ledger,"  "ditto,"  and  "  £.  s.  d.," 
which  derives  its  origin  from  Lire,  Soldi,  and  Dcnari.  "  Alli- 
gator "  is  from  the  Spanish  el  lagarto,  the  lizard,  being 
the  largest  of  the  lizard  species.  "  Stipulation "  is  from 
stipulum,  a  straw,  which  the  Romans  broke  when  they  made 
a  mutual  engagement.  "  Dexterity"  is  simply  righthanded- 
ness.  "Mountebank"  means  a  quack-medicine  vendor, — 
from  the  Italian  montare,  to  mount,  and  banco,  a  bench; 


;)88  AVOKDS;    THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

litorall}^  one  who  mounts  a  bench  to  boast  of  liis  infallibb* 
skill  in  curing  diseases.  "Quandary"  is  a  corruption  of  the 
French,  qu'en  dirai  ije)'i  "what  shall  I  say  of  it?" — and 
expresses  that  feeling  of  uncertainty  which  would  naturally 
prompt  such  a  question.  "Faint"  is  from  the  French,  se 
feindre,  to  pretend;  so  that  originally  fainting  was  a 
pretended  weakness  or  inability.  We  have  an  example  of 
the  thing  originally  indicated  by  the  word,  in  the  French 
theatres,  where  professional  fainters  are  employed,  whose 
business  it  is  to  be  o-vercome  and  to  sink  to  the  floor  under 
the  powerful  acting  of  the  tragedians. 

"  Topsy-turvy  "  is  said  to  be  a  contraction  or  corruption 
of  "  top-side  t'other  way."  "  Helter-skelter"  is  either  from 
hilariter  et  celeriier,  "gaily  and  quickly,"  or,  moi'e  probably, 
from  helter,  to  hang,  and  skelter,  order,  i.e.,  "  hang  order." 
"Hip!  hip!  hurrah!"  is  said  to  have  been  originally  a  war- 
cry  adopted  by  the  stormers  of  a  German  town,  wherein 
a  great  many  Jews  had  taken  refuge.  The  place  being 
sacked,  the  Jews  were  all  put  to  the  sword,  amid  the 
shouts  of  ''Hierosohjma  est  penVttar  From  the  first  letters 
of  these  words  (h.  e.  p.)  an  exclamation  was  contrived. 
When  the  wine  sparkles  in  the  cup,  and  patriotic  or  other 
soul-thrilling  sentiments  are  greeted  with  a  "Hip!  hip! 
hurrah!"  it  is  well  enough  to  remember  the  origin  of  a 
cry  which  reminds  us  of  the  cruelty  of  Christians  toward 
God's  chosen  people.  "Sexton"  is  a  corruption  of  "sacris- 
tan," which  is  from  sacra,  the  sacred  things  of  a  church.  The 
sacristan's  office  was  to  take  care  of  the  vessels  of  the 
service  and  the  vestments  of  the  clergy.  Since  the 
Eeforraation,  his  duties  in  this  respect  have  been  greatly 
lessened,  and  he  has  dug  the  graves, —  so  that  the  term 


CURIOSITIES    OF    LAXGUAGE.  389 

now  commonly  means  grave-digger,  though  it  still  retains 
somewhat  of  its  old  meaning. 

"  Toad-eater  "  is  a  metaphor  supposed  to  be  taken  from 
a  mountebank's  boy  eating  toads,  in  order  to  show  his 
master's  skill  in  expelling  poison.  It  is  more  probable, 
however,  that  the  phrase  is  a  version  of  the  French,  avaler 
des  coideuvres,  which  means  putting  up  with  all  sorts  of 
indignities  without  showing  resentment.  The  propriety 
of  the  term  rests  on  the  fact  that  dependent  persons  are 
often  forced  to  do  the  most  nauseous  things  to  please  their 
patrons.  The  same  trick  of  pretending  to  eat  reptiles, 
such  as  toads,  is  held  by  some  etymologists  to  be  the  origin 
of  the  terms  "buffoon,"  "buffoonery,"  from  the  Latin,  bicfo, 
a  toad,  Wedgwood  derives  it  from  the  French,  honffon,  a 
jester,  from  the  Italian,  huffa,  a  puff,  a  blast  or  a  blurt 
with  the  mouth  made  at  one  in  scorn.  A  puff  with  the 
mouth  indicates  contempt;  it  is  emblematically  making 
light  of  an  object.  In  "David  Copperfield"  we  read: 
"' And  who  minds  Dick?  Dick's  nobody !  Whoo!'  He  blew 
a  slight,  contemptuous  breath,  as  if  he  blew  himself 
away." 

"Cant"  (Gaelic,  cainnt,  speech)  is  properly  the  language 
spoken  by  thieves  and  beggars  among  themselves,  when 
they  do  not  wish  to  be  understood  by  bystanders.  Sub- 
sequently it  came  to  mean  the  peculiar  terms  used  by  any 
other  profession  or  community.  Some  etymologists  derive 
the  word  from  the  Latin,  ('(uttare,  to  sing,  and  suppose  it  to 
signify  the  whining  cry  of  professional  beggars,  though  it 
may  have  obtained  its  beggar  sense  from  some  instinctive 
notion  of  the  quasi-religious  one.  It  has  been  noted  that 
the  whole  class  of  words  comprising  "enchant,"  "incanta- 
tion," etc.,  were  primarily  referable  to  religious  ceremonies 


390  "WORDS;   THEIR    I'SE    AND    ABUSE. 

of  some  kind;  and  as  once  an  important  part  of  a  beggar's 
daily  labor  was  invoking,  or  seeming  to  invoke,  blessings 
on  those  who  gave  him  alms,  this,  with  the  natural  ten- 
dency to  utter  any  oft- repeated  phrases  in  a  sing-song, 
rhythmical  tone,  gave  to  the  word  "cant"  its  present  sig- 
nification. In  Scotland  the  word  has  a  peculiar  meaning. 
About  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  Andrew  and 
Alexander  Cant,  of  Edinburgh,  maintained  that  all  refusers 
of  the  covenant  ought  to  be  excommunicated,  and  that  all 
excommunicated  might  lawfully  be  killed;  and  in  their 
grace  after  meat  they  "  praid  for  those  phanaticques  and 
seditious  ministers"  who  had  been  arrested  and  impris- 
oned, that  the  Lord  would  pity  and  deliver  them.  From 
these  two  Cants,  Andrew  and  Alexander,  it  is  said,  all 
seditious  praying  and  preaching  in  Scotland  is  called 
"  Canting." 

The  tendency  to  regard  money  as  the  source  of  true 
happiness  is  strikingly  illustrated  in  the  word  "wealth," 
which  is  connected  with  "  weal,"  just  as  in  Latin  heatus 
meant  both  blessed  and  rich,  and  o^.jSto':  the  same  in  Greek. 
"Property"  and  "  propriety "  come  from  the  same  French 
word,  propriete;  so  that  the  Frenchman  in  Ncav  York  was 
not  far  out  of  the  wa}',  when  in  the  panic  of  1857  he 
said  he  "should  lose  all  his  propyietij.''  The  term  "blue- 
stocking," applied  to  literary  ladies,  has  a  curious  origin. 
Originally,  in  England  in  17G0,  it  was  conferred  on  a 
society  of  literary  persons  of  both  sexes.  The  society 
derived  its  name  from  the  blue  worsted  stockings  always 
worn  by  Benjamin  Stillingfieet,  a  distinguished  writer,  who 
was  one  of  the  most  active  promoters  of  this  association. 
This  term  was  subsequently  conferred  on  literary  ladies, 
from  the  fact  that  the  accomplished  and  fascinating  Mrs. 


CUKIOSJTIES    or    L\XGUAGE.  301 

Jeiniiighain  wore  blue  stockings  at  the  social  and  literary 
entertainments  given  by  Lady  Montague.  "Woman"  is 
the  xvif  or  «e&-nian,  who  stays  at  home  to  spin,  as  distin- 
guished from  the  »ca^;-man,  who  goes  abroad  to  use  the 
weapon  of  war.  The  term  "'man"  is,  of  course,  generic, 
including  both  male  and  female.  "  Lady "  primarily  sig- 
nifies bread  keeper.  It  is  derived  from  the  Anglo-Saxon, 
}il(efdi(je,  i.e.,  she  who  looks  after  the  loaf;  or  else  is  a 
corruption  of  hldficeardige,  from  hhlf,  bread,  loaf,  and 
tceardian,  to  keep,  look  after.  "Waist"  is  the  same  as 
waste;  that  part  of  the  figure  which  wastes, —  that  is, 
diminishes. 

"Canard"  has  a  very  curious  origin.  M.  Quetelet,  a 
French  writer,  in  the  "  Annuaire  de  T  Academic  Fran- 
^aise,"  attributes  the  first  application  of  this  term  to 
Norbert  Cornelissen,  who,  to  give  a  sly  hit  at  the  ridicu- 
lous pieces  of  intelligence  in  the  public  journals,  stated 
that  an  interesting  experiment  had  just  been  made  cal- 
culated to  prove  the  voracity  of  ducks.  Twenty  were 
placed  together;  and  one  of  them  having  been  killed  and 
cut  up  into  the  smallest  possible  pieces,  feathers  and  all, 
was  thrown  to  the  other  nineteen,  and  most  gluttonously 
gobbled  up.  Another  was  then  taken  from  the  nineteen, 
and,  being  chopped  small  like  its  predecessor,  was  served 
up  to  the  eighteen,  and  at  once  devoured  like  the  other; 
and  so  on  to  the  last,  who  thus  was  placed  in  the  position 
of  having  eaten  his  nineteen  companions.  This  story, 
most  pleasantly  narrated,  ran  the  round  of  all  the  jour- 
nals of  Europe.  It  then  became  almost  forgotten  for 
about  a  score  of  years,  when  it  went  back  from  America 
with  amplifications;  but  the  word  remained  in  its  novel 
signification. 


392  woKUs;  their  use  and  abuse. 

"Abominable"  was  once  supposed  to  have  been  derived 
from  the  Latin  words  ah,  from,  and  homo,  a  man,  mean- 
ing repugnant  to  humanity.  It  really  comes  from  ahoini- 
nor,  which  again  is  from  ab  and  omen;  and  it  conveys  tlie 
idea  of  what  is  in  a  religious  sense  profane  and  detestable, 
—  in  short,  of  evil  omen.  Milton  always  applies  it  to 
devilish,  profane,  or  idolatrous  objects.  "Poltroon"  is 
polUce  tnincHs,  i.e.,  with  the  thumb  cut  off, — j^oUex,  Latin, 
meaning  thumb,  and  tnuicus,  maimed  or  mutilated.  When 
the  Roman  empire  was  about  falling  in  pieces,  the  valor 
of  the  citizens  had  so  degenerated,  that,  to  escape  fighting, 
many  cut  off  their  right  thumbs,  thus  disabling  themselves 
from  using  the  pike.  "Farce"  is  derived  horn  faixire, 
a  Latin  word  meaning  to  stuff,  as  Avith  flour,  herbs,  and 
other  ingredients  in  cooking.  A  farce  is  a  comedy  with 
little  plot,  stuffed  with  ludicrous  incidents  and  expressions. 
"Racy"  is  from  "race,"  meaning  family,  breed,  and  signi- 
fies having  the  characteristic  flavor  of  origin,  savoring  of 
the  source. 

"Trivial"  may  be  from  trivium,  in  the  sense  of  tres  vice, 
a  place  where  three  roads  meet,  and  thus  indicate  that 
which  is  commonplace,  or  of  daily  occurence.  But  it  is 
more  probably  from  tririioii,  in  the  sense  in  which  the 
woi'd  was  used  in  the  Middle  Ages,  when  it  meant  the 
course  of  three  arts,  grammar,  logic,  and  rhetoric,  which 
formed  the  common  curriculum  of  the  universities,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  qaudrivium,  which  embraced  four 
more,  namely,  music,  arithmetic,  geometry,  and  astronomy. 
Trivial  things  in  this  sense  may  mean  things  that  occur 
ordinarily,  as  distinguished  from  higher  or  more  abstruse 
things.  The  word  "quiz"  has  a  remarkable  origin,  unless 
the   etymologists   who   give   its    derivation   are    themselves 


CURIOSITIES    OF    LANGUAGE.  393 

quizzing  their  readers.  It  is  said  that  many  years  ago, 
when  one  Daly  was  patentee  of  the  Irish  theatres,  he 
spent  the  evening  of  a  Saturday  in  company  with  many 
of  the  wits  and  men  of  fashion  of  the  day.  Gambling 
was  introduced,  when  the  manager  staked  a  large  sum 
that  he  would  have  spoken,  all  through  the  principal 
streets  of  Dublin,  by  a  certain  hour  next  day,  Sunday,  a 
word  having  no  meaning,  and  being  derived  from  no 
known  language.  Wagers  were  laid,  and  stakes  depos- 
ited. Daly  repaired  to  the  theatre,  and  dispatched  all 
the  servants  and  supernumeraries  with  the  word  "Quiz," 
which  they  chalked  on  every  door  and  every  shop  window 
in  town.  Shops  being  all  shut  next  day,  everybody  going 
to  and  coming  from  the  different  places  of  worship  saw 
the  word,  and  everybody  repeated  it,  so  that  "Quiz"  was 
heard  all  through  Dublin;  the  circumstance  of  so  strange 
a  word  being  on  every  door  and  window  caused  much 
surprise,  and  ever  since,  should  a  strange  stor}'  be  at- 
tempted to  be  passed  current,  it  draws  forth  the  expres- 
sion "You  are  'quizzing'  me."  Some  person  who  has  a 
just  aversion  to  practical  jokes,  wittily  defines  a  "quizzer" 
as  "one  who  believes  me  to  be  a  fool  because  I  will  not 
believe  him  to  be  a  liar." 

"Huijuenot"  is  a  word  whose  origin  is  still  a  vexata 
qucestio  of  etymology.  Of  the  many  derivations  given, 
some  of  which  are  ridiculously  fanciful,  Eiynois,  which 
Voltaire  and  others  give  from  the  German,  Ekhjenossen, 
confederates,  is  the  one  generally  received.  A  plausible 
derivation  is  from  lIii(/uenot,  a  small  piece  of  money, 
which,  in  the  time  of  Hugo  Capet,  was  worth  less  than  a 
denier.  At  the  time  of  Amboisi's  conspiracy,  some  of  the 
petitioners   tied    through    fear;    whereuiion    some    of    the 


39-i  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

countrymen  said  they  were  poor  fellows,  not  worth  a 
Huguenot, —  whence  the  nickname  in  question.  "Pen- 
sive" is  a  picturesque  word,  from  jjoimre,  the  fre- 
quentative of  pendere,  to  weigh.  The  French  have  x>6nsee, 
a  thought,  the  result  of  mental  weighing.  A  pensive 
figure  is  that  in  which  a  person  appears  to  be  holding 
an  invisible  balance  of  reflection.  "Bumper"  is  a  cor- 
ruption of  le  bon  pere,  meaning  "the  Holy  Father,"  or 
Pope,  who  was  once  the  great  toast  of  every  feast. 
As  this  was  commonly  the  first  toast,  it  was  consid- 
ered that  the  glasses  would  be  desecrated  by  being  again 
used. 

"  Nice  "  is  derived  by  some  etymologists  from  the  An- 
glo-Saxon, hnesc,  soft,  effeminate;  but  there  is  good  reason 
for  believing  that  it  is  from  the  Latin,  nescms,  ignorant, 
"Wise,  and  nothing  nice,"  says  Chaucer;  that  is,  no  wise 
ignorant.  If  so,  it  is  a  curious  instance  of  the  extraor- 
dinary changes  of  meaning  which  words  undergo,  that 
"  nice  "  should  come  to  signify  accurate  or  fastidious,  which 
implies  knowledge  and  taste  rather  than  ignorance.  The 
explanation  is,  that  the  diffidence  of  ignorance  resembles 
the  fastidious  slowness  of  discernment.  "Gibberish"  is 
from  a  famous  sage.  Giber,  an  Arab,  who  sought  for  the 
philosopher's  stone,  and  used,  perhaps,  senseless  incanta- 
tions. "  Alert "  is  a  picturesque  word  from  the  Italian, 
air  erte, —  on  the  mound  or  rampart.  The  "alert"  man 
is  one  who  is  wide-awake  and  watchful,  like  the  warder  on 
the  watch-tower,  or  the  sentinel  upon  the  rampart.  "  By- 
laws" are  not,  etymologically,  laws  of  inferior  importance, 
but  the  laws  of  "  byes "  or  towns,  as  distinguished  from 
the  general  laws  of  a  kingdom.     "  By  "  is  Danish  for  town 


CURIOSITIES   OF   LAXGUAGE.  395 

or    village;    as  "Whitby,"  White    Town,    "Derby,"    Deer 
Town,  etc, 

A  writer  in  "  Notes  and  Queries "  suggests  that  the 
word  "  snobs "  may  be  of  classical  origin,  derived  from 
sine  obola,  without  a  penny.  It  is  not  probable,  however, 
that  it.  was  meant  as  a  sneer  at  poverty  only.  A  more 
ingenious  suggestion  is  that,  as  the  higher  classes  were 
called  "nobs," — i.e.,  nohilitas,  the  nobility, —  the  "  s-nobs  " 
were  those  sine  nobilitate,  without  any  blue  blood  in  their 
veins,  or  pure  aristocratic  breeding.  "  Humbug "  is  an 
expressive  word,  about  the  origin  of  which  etymologists 
are  disagreed.  An  ingenious  explanation,  not  given  in  the 
dictionaries,  is,  that  it  is  derived  from  "  Hume  of  the  Bog," 
a  Scotch  laird,  so  called  from  his  estate,  who  lived  during 
the  reign  of  William  and  Anne.  He  was  celebrated  in 
Edinburgh  circles  for  his  marvellous  stories,  which,  in  the 
exhausting  draughts  they  made  on  his  hearer's  credulity, 
out-Munchausened  Munchausen.  Hence,  any  tough  story 
was  called  "a  regular  Hume  of  the  Bog,"  or,  by  contrac- 
tion, "  Humbug."  Another  etymolog3'  of  "  humbug  "  is  a 
piece  of  Hamburg  news;  i.e.,  a  Stock  Exchange  canard. 
Webster  derives  the  word  from  "  hum,"  to  impose  on,  de- 
ceive, and  "  bug "  a  frightful  object,  a  bugbear.  Wedg- 
wood thinks  it  may  come  from  the  union  of  "hum"  and 
"  buzz,"  signifying  sound  without  sense.  He  cites  a  catch, 
set  by  Dr.  Arne  in  "  Notes  and  Queries  ": 

"'Buzz,'  quoth  the  blue  fly, 
'Hum,"  quoth  the  bee, 
'Buzz'  and  'hum'  they  cry. 
And  so  do  we.  " 

"Imbecile"  is  from  tlie  Latin,  in  and  haciUum,  a  walk- 
ing  stick;    one  who    tlirougli    intinnity  lean.s   for    supjiort 


390  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

upon  a  stick.  "Petrels"  are  little  Peters,  because,  like 
the  apostles,  they  can  walk  on  the  water.  "  Hocus  pocus  " 
is  a  corruption  of  Hoc  est  corpus,  "  this  is  the  body,"  words 
once  used  in  necromancy  or  jugglery.  "Chagrin"  is  pri- 
marily a  hard,  granulated  leather,  which  chafes  the  limbs; 
hence,  secondarily,  irritation  or  vexation.  "Canon"  is 
from  a  Greek  word  meaning  "cane";  first  a  hollow  rule 
or  a  cane  used  as  a  measure,  then  a  law  or  rule.  The 
word  is  identical  with  "  cannon,"  so  called  from  its  hollow, 
tube-like  form.  Hence  it  has  been  wittily  said  that  the 
world  in  the  Middle  Ages  was  governed  first  by  canons, 
and  then  by  cannons, —  first,  by  Saint  Peter,  and  then  by 
saltpetre. 

"  Booby "  primarily  denotes  a  person  who  gapes  and 
stares  about,  wondering  at  everything.  From  the  syllable 
"  ba,"  representing  the  opening  of  the  mouth,  are  formed 
the  French  words  haier,  heer,  to  gape,  and  thence  in  the 
patois  of  the  Hainault,  haia,  the  mouth,  and  figuratively 
one  who  stands  staring  with  open  mouth,  houhie.  Webster 
thinks  the  word  is  derived  from  the  French,  houhie,  a  water- 
fowl. "  Pet,"  a  darling,  is  from  the  French,  petit,  which 
comes  from  the  Latin,  petitus,  sought  after.  "My  pet" 
means  literally  "  my  sought  after  or  desired  one."  "  Petty  " 
is  also  from  the  French,  petit,  little.  "  Assassin  "  is  derived 
from  the  Persian,  hashish,  an  intoxicating  opiate.  "  The 
Assassins "  were  a  tribe  of  fanatics,  who  lived  in  the 
mountains  of  Lebanon,  and  executed  with  terror  and 
subtlety  every  order  entrusted  to  them  b}-  their  chief,  the 
"  Old  Man  of  the  Mountain."  They  made  a  jest  of  tor- 
ture when  seized,  and  were  the  terror  alike  of  Turk  and 
Christian.  They  resembled  the  Thugs  of  India.  "  Blun- 
derbuss "    (properly   thunder-buss)    is    from    the    German 


CURIOSITIES   OF    LANGUAGE.  397 

hf'chftc,  applied  to  a  rifle,  a  box;  hence  "  arquebuss "  and 
"  Brown  Bess."  "  Bosh "  is  derived,  according  to  some 
etymologists,  from  a  Turkisli  word  meaning  "empty," — 
according  to  others,  from  the  German,  bosse,  a  joke  or 
trifle.  Mr.  Blackley,  in  his  "  Word-Gossip,"  says  it  is  the 
pure  gypsy  word  for  "  fiddle,"  which  suggests  the  semi- 
sanctioned  "fiddle-de-dee!"  "Person"  primarih*  meant 
an  actor.  The  Roman  theatres,  which  could  hold  thirty 
to  forty  thousand  spectators,  were  so  large  that  the  actors 
wore  masks  containing  a  contrivance  to  render  the  voice 
louder.  Such  a  mask  was  called  persona  (per  sonare,  to 
sound  through),  because  the  voice  sounded  through  it.  By 
a  common  figure  of  speech,  the  word  meaning  "mask" 
(persona)  was  afterward  applied  to  its  wearer;  so  persona 
came  to  signify  "  actor."  But  as  all  men  are  actors,  play- 
ing each  his  part  on  the  stage  of  life,  the  word  "  person  " 
came  afterward  to  signify  a  man  or  woman.  "Parson" 
the  "chief  person"  of  a  parish,  is  another  form  of  the 
same  word.  "Curmudgeon"  is  probably  from  "corn- 
merchant,"  one  who  tries  to  enrich  himself  by  hoard- 
ing grain  and  withholding  it  from  others  ;  or  it  may 
be  from  the  French,  coenr,  the  heart,  and  m(fchant, 
wicked,  "Haberdasher"  is  from  the  German,  Habt 
iJir  das  h'ler  ?  i.e.,  Have  j'ou  this  here?  "Hoax"  is 
from  the  Anglo-Saxon,  husc,  mockery  or  contempt;  or, 
perhaps  it  is  from  "  hocnspocus,"  which  was  at  one  time 
used  to  ridicule  the  Roman  Catholic  doctrine  of  transub- 
stantiation. 

"  Right"  is  from  the  Latin  rectus,  ruled,  proceeding  in  a 
straight  line;  "  wrong  "  is  the  perfect  participle  of  "  wring," 
that  which  has  been  "wrung"  or  wrested  fi-om  the  right; 
just  as  in  French  tort  is  from  forqueo.  that  which  is  twisted. 


398  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

"  Ilumble-pie"  is  properly  "  uinble-pie."  The  unibles  were 
the  entrails  or  coarser  parts  of  the  deer,  the  perquisite  of 
the  keeper  or  huntsman.  "  Pantaloon"  is  from  the  Italian, 
piante  leone  {pantu-Ieonr,  jjaiifaJoon),  "  the  Planter  of  the 
Lion";  i.e.,  the  Standard-Bearer  of  A'^enice.  The  Lion 
of  St.  Mark  was  the  standard  of  Venice.  "  Pantaloon  "  was 
a  masked  character  in  the  Italian  comedy,  the  butt  of  the 
play,  who  wore  breeches  and  stockings  that  were  all  of  one 
piece.  The  Spanish  language  has  panalon,  a  slovenly  fellow 
whose  shirt  hangs  out  of  his  breeches.  "  Cheat  "  is  from 
the  Latin,  cadere,  to  fall.  The  word  "  escheats  "  first  de- 
noted lands  that  "  fell "  to  the  crown  by  forfeiture.  The 
"  escheatours,"  who  certified  these  to  the  Exchequer,  prac- 
tised so  much  fraud,  that,  by  a  natural  transition,  the  "  es- 
cheatour "  passed  into  "  cheater,"  and  "  escheat "  into 
"  cheat." 

"  Salary "  is  from  the  Latin,  sal,  salt,  which  in  the 
reign  of  the  Emperor  Augustus  comprised  the  provisions,  as 
well  as  the  pay,  of  the  Roman  military  officers.  From 
"  salary  "  came,  probably,  the  expression,  "  He  is  not  worth 
his  '  salt,'  "  that  is,  his  pay  or  wages.  "  Kidnap  "  is  from  the 
German  kind,  or  Provincial  English,  kid,  meaning  "  child," 
and  najy  or  nab,  "  to  steal," —  to  steal  children.  "  Hawk," 
in  Anglo-Saxon,  hafoc,  points  to  the  havoc  which  that  bird 
makes  among  the  smaller  ones;  as  "  raven  "  expresses  the 
greedy  or  "ravenous"  disposition  of  the  bird  so  named. 
"  Owl "  is  said  to  be  the  past  participle  of  "to  yell  "  (as  in 
Latin  idula,  the  screech-owl,  is  from  idulare),  and  differs 
from  "  howl  "  only  in  its  spelling.  "  Solecism  "  is  from  Soli, 
a  town  of  Cilicia,  the  people  of  which  corrupted  the  pure 
Greek.  "  Squirrel  "  is  from  two  Greek  words,  fry.ia,  a  shade, 
and  obpd^  a  tail.   "  Sycophant "  is  primarily  a  "  fig-shower  " ; 


CURIOSITIES    OF    LANGUAGE.  399 

one  who  informed  the  public  officers  of  Attica  that  the  law 
against  the  exportation  of  figs  had  been  violated.  Hence 
the  word  came  to  moan  a  common  informer,  a  mean 
parasite.  "  Parasite,"  from  the  Greek  -«,/>«,  beside,  and 
ciToq^  food,  means  literally  one  who  eats  at  the  table  of 
another, —  a  privilege  which  is  apt  to  be  paid  for  by 
obsequiousness  and  flattery. 

"  Sarcasm,"  from  the  Greek,  adp^,  flesh,  and  zot^w,  I  tear,  is 
literally  a  tearing  of  the  flesh.  "  Tribulation  "  is  from  the 
Latin  tribidum,  a  kind  of  sledge  or  heavy  roller,  which  did 
the  work  of  the  English  flail,  by  hard  grinding  and  wearing, 
instead  of  by  repeated  light  strokes.  Troubles,  afiiictions 
and  sorrows  being  the  divinely  appointed  means  for  sepa- 
rating the  chaff  from  the  wheat  of  men's  natures, —  the 
light  and  trivial  from  the  solid  and  valuable, —  the  early 
Christians,  by  a  rustic  but  familiar  metaphor,  called  these 
sorrows  and  trials  "  tribulations,"  threshings  of  the  inner 
spiritual  man,  by  which  only  could  he  be  fitted  for  the 
heavenly  garner.     As  Witlier  beautifully  sings: 

"Till  the  mill  the  grains  in  pieces  tear, 
The  richness  of  the  flour  will  scarce  appear; 
So  till  men's  persons  great  afflictions  touch. 
If  worth  be  found,  their  worth  is  not  much; 
Because,  like  wheat  in  straw,  they  have  not  yet 
That  value,  which  in  threshing  thoy  may  get." 

"Tabby,"  a  familiar  name  of  cats,  is  the  French  tabis, 
which  comes  from  the  Persian  retabi,  a  rich  watered  silk, 
and  denotes  the  wavy  bars  upon  their  coats.  "  Schooner  " 
has  a  curious  derivation.  In  1713  Captain  Andrew  Robin- 
son launched  the  first  vessel  of  this  kind,  with  gaff's  instead 
of  the  lateen  yards  until  then  in  use,  and  the  luff"  of  the  sail 
bent  to  hoops  on  tlii»  mast.  As  she  sli[)ped  down  the  ways 
a  bystander  exclaimed,  "Oh,  liovv  she  'scoons'!" — where- 


400  words;   their  use  and  abuse. 

ii|if)n  the  builder,  catching  at  the  word,  replied,  "  A 
'.scooner''  let  her  be!"  Originally  the  word  was  spelled 
witliout  the  h.  "  Supercilious,"  from  supercilium,  the  eye- 
brow, is  literally  knitting  the  eyebrows  in  pride.  "Slave" 
clironicles  the  contest  between  the  Teutonic  and  Sclavonic 
or  Slavonic  races.  When  a  German  captured  a  Russian  or 
Bohemian,  he  would  call  him  a  "  sclave  "  or  "  slave,"  whereby 
the  word  became  associated  with  the  idea  of  servitude.  In 
Oriental  France,  in  the  eighth  century,  princes  and  bishops 
were  rich  in  these  captives. 

"  Servant "  is  from  servits,  which  the  Justinian  code 
derives  from  servare,  to  preserve, —  because  the  victor  pre- 
served his  captives  alive,  instead  of  killing  them. 

"Scrupulous"  is  from  the  Latin,  scyupiilus,  a  small, 
sharp  stone,  such  as  might  get  into  a  Roman  traveller's 
open  shoe,  and  distress  him,  whence  the  further  meaning 
of  doubts,  or  a  source  of  doubt  and  hesitation.  Afterward 
the  word  came  to  express  a  measure  of  weight,  the  twenty- 
fourth  part  of  an  ounce;  and  hence  to  be  scrupulous  is 
to  pay  minute,  nice,  and  exact  attention  to  matters  often  in 
themselves  of  small  weight.  "  Plagiarism "  is  literally 
"  man-stealing."  As  books  are  one's  mental  offspring,  the 
word  came  naturally  to  mean,  first,  the  stealing  of  a  book 
or  manuscript  which  the  thief  published  as  his  own;  sec- 
ondly, quoting  from  another  man's  writings  without 
acknowledgment.  "Parlor,"  from  parler,  to  speak,'  is, 
therefore,  the  "  talking  room,"  as  "  boudoir,"  from  houder,  to 
pout,  is  literally  the  "pouting-room.'"  "  Egregious"  is  from 
the  Latin  ex,  from,  and  grege,  flock  or  herd.  An  "  egre- 
gious" lie  is  one  distinguished  from  the  common  herd  of 
lies,  such    as    one    meets    with    in    every    patent-medicine 


CURIOSITIES    OF    LANGUAGE.  401 

advertisement   and    political    newspaper.      "Negotiate"    is 
from  ncgotior,  compounded  of  ne  ego  otior,  I  am  not  idle. 

The  origin  of  the  word  "caucus"  has  long  been  a  vexed 
question  with  etymologists.  Till  recently  it  was  supposed 
1)}'  many  to  be  a  corruption  of  "caulkers,"  being  derived 
from  an  association  of  these  men  in  Boston,  who  met  to 
organize  resistance  to  England  just  before  the  revolu- 
tionary war.  Dr.  J.  Hammond  Trumbull,  of  Hartford, 
Connecticut,  has  suggested  a  new  and  ingenious  derivation 
of  the  term,  which  is  more  satisfactory,  and  probably 
correct.  Strachey,  in  his  "  Historic  of  Travaile  into  Vir- 
ginia," 1610-12  (printed  by  the  Hakluyt  Society,  18-49), 
says  that  the  Chechahamanias,  a  free  people,  acknowledg- 
ing the  sujiremacy  of  Powhatan,  were  governed,  not  by  a 
iceroa)ice,  commander,  sent  by  Powhatan,  but  by  their 
priests,  with  the  assistance  of  their  elders;  and  this  boai'd 
was  called  cawcatvivas.  Captain  John  Smith  writes  cocke- 
rouse  for  caiccawtvas,  in  the  sense  of  "captain";  but  the  En- 
glish generally  understood  it  in  the  sense  of  "counsellor," 
and  adopted  it  from  the  Indians,  as  Beverley  states  that  it 
designates  "one  that  has  the  honor  to  be  of  the  king's  or 
queen's  council,"  a  provincial  councillor,  just  as  northern 
politicians  now  use  the  word  sarJiein,  and  formerly  used 
mngivo)np.  The  verb  from  which  caiccawwas,  or  cocke- 
rouse  comes,  means  primarily  "to  talk  to," — hence  to 
"harangue,"  "advise,"  "encourage,"  and  is  found  in  all 
Algonquin  dialects,  as  Abnaki  kakesoo,  to  incite,  and  Cliip- 
peway  gagnnso  {n  nasal),  to  exhort,  urge,  counsel.  Caw- 
cnwwas,  representing  the  adjective  form  of  this  verb,  is 
"one  who  advises,  projnotes," — a  caucuser.  "Manumit" 
is  from  »;a;(//.s,  hand,  and  niiHere,  io  dismiss, —  to  dismiss 
a    slave    Avith    a   slap   of   the    hand,  on    setting    him    free. 


402  words;  titeir  use  and  abuse. 

"Hypocrite"  comes  from  a  Greek  word  signifying  one  who 
feigns  or  plays  a  part  on  the  stage.  "  Kennel,"  a  dog 
house,  is  from  the  Italian,  canile,  and  this  from  the  Latin, 
canis,  a  dog.  '"  Kennel,"  in  the  sense  of  gutter,  with  its 
kindred  words,  "can,"  "cane,"  and  "channel,"  is  derived 
from  canna,  a  cane,  which  is  like  a  tube, 

"Apple-pie  order"  is  a  popular  phrase  of  which  few 
persons  know  the  meaning.  Does  it  signify  in  order,  or 
in  disorder?  A  writer  in  the  "North  British  Review" 
favors  the  latter  interpretation.  He  thinks  it  has  nothing 
to  do  with  "apple"  or  "pie,"  in  the  common  sense  of  those 
words.  He  believes  that  it  is  a  typographical-  term,  and 
that  it  was  originally  "Chapel  pie."  A  printing  house 
was,  and  is  to  this  day,  called  a  chapel, —  perhaps  from  the 
Chapel  at  Westminster  Abbey,  in  which  Caxton's  earliest 
works  are  said  to  have  been  printed;  and  "pie"  is  type 
after  it  is  "distributed"  or  broken  up,  and  before  it  has 
been  re-sorted.  " '  Pie '  in  this  sense  came  from  the  con- 
fused a.nd  po-plexiiig  rules  of  the  ^  Pie,'  that  is,  the  order  for 
finding  tlie  lessons,  in  Catholic  times,  which  those  who  have 
read,  or  care  to  read,  the  Preface  to  the  '  Book  of  Common 
Prayer,'  will  find  there  expressed  and  denounced.  Here 
is  the  passage:  '  Moi'eover  the  number  and  hardness  of 
the  rules  called  the  Pie,  and  the  manifold  changings  of 
the  service,  was  the  cause  that  to  turn  the  book  only  was 
so  hard  and  intricate  a  matter,  that  many  times  there  was 
more  business  to  find  out  what  should  be  read  than  to 
read  it  when  it  was  found  out.'  To  leave  your  type  in 
'  pie '  is  to  leave  it  unsorted  and  in  confusion,  and  '  apple- 
jiie  order,'  which  we  take  to  be  '  chapel-pie  order,'  is  to 
leave  anything  in  a  thorough  mess.  Those  who  like  to 
take    the    other   side,    and    assert    that    'apple-pie    order' 


CURIOSITIES   OF    LANGUAGE.  403 

means  in  perfect  order,  may  still  ^find  their  derivation  in 
'  chapel-pie ' ;  for  the  ordering  and  sorting  of  the  '  pie '  or 
type  is  enforced  in  every  '  chapel '  or  printing-house  hy 
severe  fines,  and  so  '  chapel-pie  order '  would  be  such  order 
of  the  type  as  the  best  friends  of  the  chapel  would  wish 
to  see."  "  The  bitter  end,"  a  phrase  often  heard  during 
the  late  civil  war,  has  a  remarkable  etymology.  A  ship's 
cable  has  always  two  ends.  One  end  is  fastened  to  the 
anchor  and  the  other  to  the  "  bits,"  or  "  bitts,"  a  frame 
of  two  strong  pieces  of  timber  tixed  perpendicularly  in 
the  fore  part  of  the  ship,  for  the  express  purpose  of 
holding  the  cables.  Hence  the  "  bitter,"  or  "  bitter 
end,"  is  the  end  fastened  to  the  bitts;  and  when  the  cable 
is  out  to  the  "bitter  end,"  it  is  all  out;  the  extremity 
has  come. 

Few  persons  who  utter  the  word  "  stranger,"  suspec  that 
it  has  its  root  in  the  single  vowel  e,  the  Latin  preposition  for 
"  from,"  which  it  no  more  resembles  than  a  bird  resembles 
an  egg.  The  links  in  the  chain  are, —  e,  ex,  extra,  extraneus, 
Stranger,  stranger.  When  a  boy  answers  a  lady,  "  Yes'm," 
he  does  not  dream  that  his  "m"  is  a  fragment  of  the  five 
syllables,  niea  domina  ("madonna,"  "  madame,"  "madam," 
"ma'am"  " 'm  ").  The  French  word  mime  is  a  striking 
illustration  of  what  philologists  call  "  phonetic  change," 
which  sometimes  "  eats  away  the  whole  body  of  a  word,  and 
leaves  nothing  behind  but  decayed  fragments."  Who  would 
believe  that  meme  contains  the  Latin  semetipsissimxis?  The 
words  "  thrall  "  and  "  thraldom  "  have  an  interesting  his- 
tory. They  come  to  us  from  a  period  when  it  was  custom- 
ary to  "  thrill "  (or  drill)  the  ear  of  a  slave  in  token  of 
servitude;  and  hence  the  significance  of  Sir  Thomas 
Browne's  remark,  "  Bow  not  to  the  omnipotency  of  gold,  nor 


404  words;  theiu  use  and  abuse. 

'  bore'  thy  ear  to  its  servitude."  The  expression  "  'signing' 
one's  name  "  takes  us  back  to  an  age  when  most  persons 
made  their  mark  or  "sign."  We  must  not  suppose  that 
this  practice  was  then,  as  now,  a  proof  of  the  ignorance  of 
the  signer.  Among  the  Saxons,  not  only  illitei-ate  persons 
made  this  sign,  but,  as  an  attestation  of  the  good  faith  of 
the  person  signing,  the  mark  of  the  cross  was  required  to  be 
attached  to  the  name  of  those  who  could  write.  From  its 
holy  association,  it  was  the  symbol  of  an  oath ;  and  hence 
the  expression  "God  save  the  mark!"  which  so  long  puz- 
zled the  commentators  of  Shakespeare,  is  now  understood 
to  be  a  form  of  ejaculation  resembling  an  oath.  It  is 
said  that  Charlemagne,  being  unable  to  write,  was  com- 
pelled to  dip  the  forefinger  of  his  glove  in  ink,  and  smear 
it  over  the  parchment  when  it  was  necessary  that  the 
imperial  sign-manual  should  be  fixed  to  an  edict.  "  Win- 
dow "  is  a  corruption  of  "  wind-door," — door  to  let  in  the 
wind. 

The  word  "handkerchief"  is  curiously  fashioned.  "Ker- 
chief," the  first  form  of  the  word,  is  from  the  French  couvre- 
chef,  "a  head-covering."  If  to  "kerchief"  we  prefix 
"  hand,"  we  have  a  "  hand-head-covering,"  or  ::  tovering  for 
the  head  held  in  the  hand,  which  is  palpably  absurd;  but 
when  we  qualify  this  word  by  "  neck "  or  "  pocket,"  we 
reach  the  climax  beyond  which  confusion  can  no  farther  go. 
How  a  covering  for  the  "  head  "  is  to  be  held  in  the  "  hand," 
and  yet  carried  in  the  "  pocket,"  it  requires  a  more  than 
ordinarily  vivid  imagination  to  conceive.  "Constable"  is 
derived  from  comes  stahuli,  or  "  Count  of  the  stable,"  who 
formerly  had  charge  of  the  king's  horses.  "  Bib  "  is  from 
bibere,  to  drink,  the  tucker  being  used  to  save  the  child's 
clothes   from   whatever    may  be  spilt  when    it  is  bibbing. 


CURIOSITIES    OF    LAXGL'AGE.  ■•     ", 

"  Dollar  "  is  the  German  thaler,  which  is  an  abbrevialiuu  of 
Jonchemsthaler,  the  valley  where  it  was  coined. 

"  Host,"  an  army,  or  a  multitude,  is  from  hosfis;  "host," 
an  entertainer,  is  from  hosjyes;  "  host,"  a  sacrifice,  is  from 
hostia.  The  word  "  rostrum  "  is  from  the  Latin  rostra,  the 
beak  of  a  ship.  After  the  submission  of  the  Latins,  334: 
B.C.,  the  vessels  of  Antium  having  been  burnt,  their  beaks 
were  made  to  adorn  the  tribune  in  the  Forum.  From  that 
time  the  rostra  became  the  indispensable  decoration  of  the 
Forum,  and  hence  the  name  "  rostrum  "  to  denote  a  plat- 
form for  orators.  "Verdict"  is  from  reredictum,  truly 
said.  "  Palliate  "  is  from  palUum,  a  cloak.  "  Carat  "  is 
from  the  Arabic  kaura,  a  bean,  the  standard  weight  for 
diamonds.  "  Salmon  "  is  from  saliendo,  which  points  to  the 
"leaps"  it  makes.  A  "cur,"  from  the  Latin  curtus,  is  a 
curtailed  dog,  whose  tail  has  been  cut  off  for  straying  in 
the  woods;  a  "terrier"  is  from  terrarius,  an  earth-dog; 
a  "spaniel"  is  a  Spanish  dog;  a  "mongrel"  is  a  dog 
of  mingled  breed;  and  the  mastiff  guards  the  maison, 
or  house.  A  horse  is  called  a  "pony"  when  puny;  a 
"hack"  from  "hackney;"  and  the  lady's  horse  was  called 
a  "  palfrey,"  because  it  was  led  ^j«/-  le  frein,  or  by  the 
rein. 

A  "  palace  "  is  so  called  from  CoUis  PaJatinus,  one  of  the 
seven  hills  of  Rome,  which  was  itself  called  Palatinus,  from 
Pales,  a  pastoi-al  deity.  On  this  hill  stood  the  "  Golden 
House "  of  Nero,  which  was  called  the  Palat'niin,  and 
became  the  type  of  the  palaces  of  all  the  kings  and  emper- 
ors of  Europe.  The  word  "court"  had  its  origin  in  the 
same  locality  and  in  the  same  distant  age.  It  was  on  the 
hills  of  Latium  that  coJiors  or  cars  was  first  used  in  the 
sense  of  a  "  hurdle,"  an  "  enclosure,"  a  "  cattle  yard."     Tlie 


406  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

cohortes,  or  divisions  of  the  Roman  army,  were  thus  named, 
so  many  soldiers  forming  a  pen  or  a  court.     Cors,  cortis, 
became  in  mediaeval  Latin  ciirtis,  and  was  used  to  denote  a 
farm,  or  a  castle  built  by  a  Roman  settler  in  the  provinces, 
and  finally  a  royal  residence,  or  palace.     That  a  word  orig- 
inally meaning  "  cow-pen,"  or  "  cattle-yard,"  should  assume 
the  meaning  of  "  palace,"  and  give  rise  to  such  derivatives 
as  "  courteous,"  "  courtesy,"  and  "  to  court,"  that  is,  to  pay 
attentions,  or  to  propose  marriage,  is  a  striking  example  of  the 
strange  transformations  which  words  undergo  in  the  course 
of  ages.     The  "  Court  of  the  Star  Chamber,"  so  odious  in 
English  history,  derived  its  name  from  the  ceiling  of  the 
room  where  it  sat,  which  was  dotted  with  stars.     "Pontiff" 
has  an  almost  equally  humble  origin.     It  is  from  the  Pons 
Suhlicins,  which  Ancus  Marcus  placed  on  wooden  joists,  and 
which  was  rebuilt  by  the  censor  iEmilius  Lepidus  in  the 
reign  of  the  second  of  the  Caesars, —  the  bridge  which  Hora- 
tius  Codes  defended,  and  whose  construction,  preservation, 
and  maintenance  were  confided  to  the  college  of  priests, — 
that  the  word  "  pontiff"  is  derived.    The  word  "  exchequer" 
comes,  according  to  Blackstone,  from  the  "checked"  cloth 
that  covered    the  table  behind  which  the  money-changers 
sat.      "Suffrage"  is  from    suffraf/iuni,  a  broken    piece  or 
potshei'd,  used  by   the   ancients  in   voting  in   their  assem- 
blies.   "  Easter  "  is  from  the  Anglo-Saxon,  ^'osfr^  (German, 
Ostard),  a  heathen  goddess  whose  feast  was  celebrated  in 
the  spring.     Remains  of  the  old  pagan  worship  have  sur- 
vived in  Easter  eggs,  yule  logs,  and,  on  the  Continent  of 
Europe,  Whitsun  fires. 

"  Mystery,"  something  secret  or  unknown,  comes  from 
mu,  the  imitation  of  closing  the  lips;  but  "mystery," 
in    the    Mystery    Plays,    such    as    continue    to    be    per- 


CURIOSITIES    OF    LANIU'AUE.  4(lT 

formed  at  Amniergau,  in  liuvaiia,  is  a  corruption  of 
)itiniderium;  it  meant  a  religious  ministry,  or  service, 
had  nothing  to  do  with  mystery,  and  should  be  spelled 
with  an  i,  and  not  with  a  y.  "  Puny  "  is  from  the  French 
puis-ne,  "since  born,"  hence,  by  metaphor,  sickly,  inferior, 
diminutive.  From  the  same  source  is  derived  "puisne'' 
(that  is,  younger,  or  inferior)  judge.  The  phrase  "  True 
Blue,"  applied  to  the  Presbyterians,  is  said  by  Dean  Stan- 
ley to  be  owing  to  the  distinct  dress  of  the  Scotch  Presby- 
terian clergy,  which  at  one  time  was  a  blue  gown  and  a 
broad  blue  bonnet.  The  Episcopal  clergy  either  were  no 
distinctive  dress  in  public  services,  or  wore  a  black  gown. 
The  Rev.  Dr.  Murray,  however,  in  an  address  before  the 
Assembly  of  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland,  gave  a  differ- 
ent explanation  of  the  phrase:  "A  Scotchman  once  told 
me  that  when  we  were  persecuted  as  a  denomination,  the 
minister  was  wont  to  go  to  the  mountains,  and  wheal  there 
was  to  be  a  communion  a  blue  flag  was  held  up  as  a  signal 
or  notice,  and  also  as  an  invitation  to  attend,  and  some 
regard  this  as  the  origin  of  the  term;  but  on  a  visit  to 
Pompeii,  a  few  years  ago,  I  spent  some  time  in  inspecting 
the  splendid  frescoes  of  variegated  hues.  I  found  all 
colors  had  faded  except  the  blue,  and  that  was  as  bright 
as  when  first  put  on,  though  nearly  two  thousand  years 
previously.  The  'true  blue'  never  gives  out, —  never 
changes.  So,  when  we  say  of  a  man  '  he  is  true  blue,'  it 
is  equivalent  to  saying  he  is  firm  in  and  true  to  his  prin- 
ciples." "  France "  owes  its  name  to  the  Franks,  who 
conquered  her  native  Celts.  The  word  Franc  comes,  ac- 
cording to  a  German  philologist,  either  from  the  Teutonic 
franlio,  "  bold,"  "  frank,"  or  from  fiaiica,  a  sharp,  double- 
edged  battle-axe,  which  the  Franks  hurled  with  great  dex- 


408  words;   tiieiu  lsl:  and  AiiUSE. 

terity  in  attacking  tlieir  enemies.     From  Franc  are  derived 
our  words  "  franchise'   and  "  enfranchisement." 

One  of  the  most  interesting  classes  of  common  words 
with  curious  derivations  is  that  of  the  names  of  things  or 
acts  which  were  once  names  of  persons.  Language  teems 
in  this  way  with  lionors  to  the  great  and  good  men  who 
have  been  benefactors  of  their  race;  and  it  also  avenges 
the  wrongs  of  humanity  by  impaling  the  very  names  of 
the  wrong-doers  in  a  perpetual  crucifixion.  Many  words  of 
this  class  betraj'  their  origin  at  once.  It  is  easy  to  recog- 
nize Tantalus  in  "  to  tantalize,"  Epicurus  in  "  epicure," 
Mesmer  in  "mesmerism,"  Gordius  in  the  "gordian"  knot 
which  Alexander  cut,  Galvani  in  "  galvanism,"  Volta  in 
the  "voltaic"  pile,  Daguerre  in  "daguerreotype,"  and  Mc- 
Adam  and  Burke  in  "  to  macadamize "  and  "  to  burke." 
But  when  we  read  or  hear  of  a  work  on  "  algebra,"  or  of 
a  person  who  has  uttered  "  gibberish,"  we  get  no  hint,  at 
first,  of  Giber  or  Geber,  the  famous  Arabian  sage,  who 
sought  for  the  philosopher's  stone,  and  used,  perhaps, 
senseless  incantations.  "  Artesian,"  applied  to  a  well, 
does  not  inform  us  that  such  a  well  was  first  cut  through 
the  chalk  basin  of  the  province  of  Artois.  We  speak  of  a 
"  dun "  without  suspecting  that  the  word  came  from  the 
name  of  a  stern  bailiff  in  the  time  of  Henry  VII,  one 
Dun,  who  was  eminently  successful  in  collecting  debts. 
We  hear  of  a  "  maudlin "  speech  without  thinking  of 
Mary  Magdalen;  of  a  "lazaretto,"  without  being  re- 
minded of  Lazarus;  of  "simony"  without  a  suggestion 
of  Simon  Magus;  and  of  "silhouettes,"  without  a  suspi- 
cion that  it  was  the  unpopular  French  minister  of  finance, 
M.  de  Silhouette,  whose  persistent  economy  doomed  his 
name  to  be  affixed    to  the  slight  and    cheap    outline  por- 


CURIOSITIES    OP    LAXGUAGE.  409 

traits  Ihiis  iianied.  "Martinet"  does  not  recall  the  rigid 
disciplinarian  in  the  army  of  Louis  XIV,  nor  does  a 
"  tram-road  "  point  very  plainly  to  Outram,  the  inventor. 
In  "saunterer"  we  do  not  readily  detect  La  Sainte  Terre, 
"the  Holy  Laud,"  the  pilgrims  to  which  took  their  own 
time  to  get  there;  nor  would  a  "pander"  ever  remind  us 
of  the  Trojan  general  Pandarus,  or  "tawdry"  of  the  fair 
of  St.  Etheldreda,  or  St.  Awdry,  where  gaudy  finery  was 
sold.  "  Music,"  "  museum,"  and  "  mosaic,"  do  not  inevi- 
tably suggest  the  Muses,  nor  does  a  "  pasquinade  "  tell  us 
about  the  statue  of  an  ancient  gladiator  which  was  ex- 
humed at  Rome,  in  the  peculiar  physiognomy  of  which 
the  wits  of  that  city  detected  a  resemblance  to  Pasquino, 
a  snappish  cobbler,  who  lived  near  by,  and  on  the  pedestal 
of  which  it  became  a  practice  to  post  lampoons.  Few  men 
think  of  Jaque,  of  Beauvais,  as  they  put  on  "jackets"; 
of  Blacket,  who  first  manufactured  the  article,  when  they 
lie  under  "blankets";  or  of  Hermes  Trismegistus,  the 
Egyptian  priest,  when  they  "  hermetically  "  seal  a  bottle  or 
fruit  can.  Excepting  the  i-eaders  of  Pascal,  it  is  probable 
that  not  many  Frenchmen  detect  in  the  word  escobarder, 
"  to  equivocate,"  the  name  of  the  great  casuist  of  the  Jesuits, 
Escobar,  whose  subtle  devices  for  the  evasion  of  the  i7ioral 
law  have  been  immortalized  in  the  "  Provincial  Letters." 

Vulcan  is  still  at  his  forge  in  "volcanoes,"  and  has  even 
descended  so  low  as  to  "vulcanize"  rubber;  and  though 
"Great  Pan  is  dead,"  he  comes  to  life  again  in  every 
"panic."  A  "sandwicli"  calls  to  mind  Lord  Sandwich, 
the  inveterate  gamester,  who  begrudged  the  time  necessary 
for  a  meal;  and  the  "spencer"  recalls  Lord  Spencer,  who 
in  hunting  lost  one  skirt  of  his  coat,  and  tore  off  the 
other, —  which    led  some   inventive   genius    to    make   half- 


410  words;    TIIEIIC    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

coats,  and  call  them  "spencers."     Of  the  two  noble  lords 
it  has  been  said  that 

"The  one  invented  half  n  coat, 
The  other  half  a  dinner." 

Epic  and  dramatic  poetry,  and  fiction  generally,  have 
addod  much  to  the  force  and  suggestiveness  of  speech. 
What  apt  and  expressive  terms  are  "  Utopian"*  (from  the 
name  given  by  Sir  Thomas  More  to  his  imaginary  island), 
and  "quixotic"!  With  what  othdr  words  could  we  supply 
the  place  of  Dean  Swift's  "liliputian"  and  "  brobding- 
nagian,"  Kenny's  "Jeremy  Diddler,"  or  Dickens's  "pick- 
wickian"  and  "  Circumlocution  Office"?  What  convenient 
terms  are  "thrasonical,"  from  Thraso,  the  braggart  of  the 
Roman  comedy,  and  "  rodomontade,"  from  Rodamonte,  a 
hero  of  Boiardo,  who,  strange  to  say,  does  not  brag  and 
bluster,  as  the  word  based  on  his  name  seems  to  imply! 
It  is  said  that  Boiardo,  when  he  liad  hit  upon  the  name 
of  his  hero,  had  the  village  bells  rung  for  joy.  To  Homer 
we  are  indebted  for  "stentorian,"  that  is,  loud-voiced,  from 
Stentor,  the  Greek  herald,  w^hose  voice  surpassed  the  united 
shout  of  fifty  men;  and  for  the  word  "to  hector,"  founded 
on  the  big  talk  of  the  Trojan  hero. 

The  language  of  savages  teems  with  expressions  of  deep 
interest  both  to  the  philologist  and  the  student  of  human 
nature.  Speech  with  them  is  a  perpetual  creation  of  utter- 
ances to  image  forth  the  total  picture  in  their  minds. 
The  Indian  "does  not  analyze  his  thoughts  or  separate  his 
utterances;  his  thoughts  rush  forth  in  a  troop.  His  speech 
is  as  a  kindling  cloud,  not  as  radiant  points  of  light." 
The  Lenni  Lenape  Indians  express  by  one  polysyllable 
what  with  us  requires  seven   monosyllables  and  three  dis- 

*  From  oil  and  tottos,  "no-place." 


CURIOSITIES    OF    LANGUAGE.  411 

syllables,  viz.:  "Come  with  the  canoe  and  take  us  across 
the  river."  This  polysyllable  is  nad/iolineen,  and  it  is 
formed  by  taking  parts  of  several  words  and  cementing 
them  into  one.  In  the  Iroquois  language  one  word  of 
twenty-one  letters  expresses  this  sentence  of  eighteen 
words:  "I  give  some  money  to  those  who  have  arrived, 
in  order  to  buy  them  more  clothes  w^ith  it."  The  apparent 
wealth  of  synonyms  and  of  grammatical  forms  in  savage 
languages  is  due,  not  to  the  mental  superiority  of  the  races 
that  speak  them,  but  to  their  inferiority, —  their  deficiency 
in  the  power  of  abstraction.  "  The  more  barbarous  a 
language,"  says  Herder,  "  the  greater  is  the  number  of  its 
conjugations."  We  must  not  suppose  that  simplicity  in 
language  precedes  complexity:  simplicity  is  the  triumph 
of  science,  not  the  spontaneous  i-esult  of  intelligence.  The 
natives  of  the  Society  Isles  have  one  w^ord  for  the  tail  of  a 
dog,  another  for  the  tail  of  a  bird,  and  a  third  for  the  tail 
of  a  sheep,  while  for  "tail"  itself,  "tail"  in  the  abstract, 
they  have  no  word  whatevei'.  The  Mohicans  have  words 
for  wood-cutting,  cutting  the  head,  etc.,  yet  no  verb  mean- 
ing simply  to  cut.  Even  the  Anglo-Saxon  language,  which 
had  a  sufficiency  of  words  for  all  shades  of  green,  red, 
blue,  yellow,  had  to  borrow  from  the  Latin  the  abstract 
word  "color,"  and,  while  possessing  abundant  names  for 
every  sort  of  crime,  derived  from  the  same  source  the 
abstract  words  "crime"  and  "transgression." 

Some  Indian  tribes  call  a  squirrel  by  a  name  signifying 
that  he  "can  stick  fast  in  a  tree";  a  mole,  by  a  word 
signifying  "carrying  the  right  hand  on  the  left  shoulder"; 
and  they  have  a  name  for  a  horse  which  means  "  having 
only  one  toe."  Among  the  savages  of  the  Pacific,  "to 
think"   is  "to  speak   in   the  stomach." 


41^  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 


WORDS    OF    ILLUSIVE    ETYMOLOGY. 

In  ilio  lapse  of  ages  words  undergo  great  changes  of 
form,  so  that  it  becomes  at  last  difficult  or  impossible  to 
ascertain  their  origin.  Terms,  of  which  the  composition 
was  originally  clear,  are  worn  and  rubbed  by  use  like  the 
pebbles  which  are  fretted  and  rounded  into  shape  and 
smoothness  by  the  sea  waves  or  by  a  rapid  stream.  Like 
the  image  and  superscription  of  a  coin,  their  meaning  is 
often  so  worn  away  that  one  cannot  make  even  a  probable 
guess  at  their  origin.  One  of  the  commonest  causes  of  the 
corruptions  of  words,  by  which  their  sources  and  original 
meanings  are  disguised,  is  the  instinctive  dislike  we  feel 
to  the  use  of  a  word  that  is  wholly  new  to  us,  and  the 
consequent  tendency  to  fasten  upon  it  a  meaning  which 
shall  remove  its  seemingly  arbitrary  character.  Foreign 
words,  therefore,  when  adopted  into  a  language,  are  espe- 
cially liable  to  these  changes,  being  corrupted  both  in 
pronunciation  and  orthography.  By  thus  anglicizing  them, 
we  not  only  avoid  the  uncouth,  barbarous  sounds  which 
are  so  offensive  to  the  ear,  but  we  help  the  memory  by 
associating  the  words  with  others  already  known. 

The  mistakes  which  have  been  made  in  attempting  to 
trace  the  origin  of  words  thus  disguised,  have  done  not 
a  little,  at  times,  to  bring  philology  into  contempt.  The 
philologist,  unless  he  has  much  native  good  sense,  and 
rules  his  inclinations  with  an  iron  rod,  is  apt  to  become 
a  verbomaniac.  There  is  a  strange  fascination  in  word- 
hunting,  and  his  hobby-horse,  it  has  been  aptly  said,  is 
a  strong  goer  that  trifles  never  balk.  "  To  him  the  British 
Channel  is  a  surface  drain,  the  Alps  and  Apennines  mere 
posts   and   rails,    the  Mediterranean    a   simple    brook,  and 


CURIOSITIES   OF   LANGUAGE.  413 

the  Himalayas  only  an  outlying  cover."  Cowper  justly 
ridicules  those  word-hunters  who,  in  their  eagerness  to 
make  some  startling  discovery,  never  pause  to  consider 
whether  there  is  any  historic  connection  between  two 
languages,  one  of  which  is  supposed  to  have  borrowed  a 
word  from  another, — 

"  Learned  philologists,  who  chase 
A  panting  syllable  through  time  and  space, 
Start  it  at  home,  and  hunt  it  in  the  darli. 
To  Gaul, —  to  Greece, —  and  into  Noah's  ark." 

A  fundamental  rule,  to  be  kept  constantly  in  sight  by 
those  wlio  would  not  etymologize  at  random,  is,  that  no 
amount  of  i-esemblance  between  words  in  different  lan- 
guages is  sufficient  to  prove  their  relationship,  nor  is  any 
amount  of  seeming  unlikeness  in  sound  or  form  sufficient 
to  disprove  their  consanguinity.  Many  etymologies  are 
true  which  appear  improbable,  and  many  appear  probable 
which  are  not  true.  As  Max  Milller  says:  "Sound  et}'^- 
mology  has  nothing  to  do  with  sound.  We  know  words 
to  be  of  the  same  origin  which  have  not  a  single  letter 
in  common,  and  which  differ  in  meaning  as  much  as  black 
and  white."  On  the  other  hand,  two  words  which  have 
identically  the  same  letters  may  have  no  etymological 
connection.  An  instance  of  the  last  case  is  the  French 
souris,  a  smile,  and  sourls,  a  mouse,  from  the  Latin  si(b- 
rldere  and  sore.c  respectively.  Fuller  amusingly  snys  tliat 
"  we  are  hot  to  infer  the  Hebrew  and  the  Engli>li  to  be 
cognate  languages  because  one  of  the  giants,  son  of  Anak, 
was  called  A-lii-inan;'"  yet  some  of  his  own  etymologies, 
though  witty  and  ingenious,  are  hardly  more  correct  tiian 
this  punning  derivation.  Thus  "compliments,"  he  sa\'s,  is 
derived  from  '"i  eoin/>I('f(i  nundiri,  because  compliments  are 
in  general  completely  mendacious;  and  he  quotes  approv- 


414  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

ingly  Sir  Jolm  Harrington's  derivation  of  the  old  English 
"elf"  and  "goblin,"  from  the  names  of  two  political 
factions  of   the  Empire,  the  Guelphs  and  the  Ghibellines. 

Archbishop  Trench  speaks  of  an  eminent  philologist 
who  deduced  "girl"  from  f/arnda,  girls  being  commonly 
talkative.  "Frontispiece"  is  usually  regarded  as  a  piece 
or  picture  in  front  of  a  book;  whereas  it  means  literally 
"  a  front  view,"  being  from  the  Low  Latin,  frontispicium, 
the  forefront  of  a  house.  The  true  origin  of  many  words 
is  hidden  by  errors  in  the  spelling.  "  Bran-new ""  is  brand- 
new,  i.e.,  "burnt  new."  "Grocer"  should  be  "grosser," 
one  who  sells  in  the  gross;  "pigmy"  is  properly  "pyg- 
my," as  Worcester  spells  it,  and  means  a  thing  the  size 
of  one's  fist  {7:uy,'j.rj).  "  Policy,"  state-craft,  is  rightly 
spelled;  but  "policies  of  insurance"  ought  to  have  the 
//,  the  word  being  derived  from  ■polliceor,  to  promise 
or  assure.  "  Island "  looks  as  if  it  were  compounded  of 
"isle"  and  "land";  but  it  is  the  same  word  as  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  ealand,  water-land,  compounded  of  ea,  water,  and 
"  land."  So  Jerseij  is  literally  "  Caesar's  island."  "  Lieu- 
tenant "  has  been  pronounced  "  leftenant,"  from  a  notion 
that  this  officer  holds  the  "  left "  of  the  line  while  the 
captain  holds  the  right.  The  word  comes  from  the  French. 
lieu-tenant,  one  holding  the  place  of  another. 

"Wiseacre"  has  no  connection  with  "acre."  The  word 
is  a  corruption,  both  in  spelling  and  pronunciation,  of  the 
German  iveissager,  a  "  wise-sayer,"  or  sayer  of  wise  maxims. 
"Gooseberry,"  Dr.  Johnson  explains  as  "a  fruit  eaten  as 
a  sauce  for  goose."  It  is,  however,  a  corruption  of  the 
German,  kraiisbeere, —  from  kraus  or  gorse,  crisp;  and  the 
fruit  gets  its  name  from  the  upright  hairs  with  which  it 
is  covered.     "  Shame- faced  "  does  not  mean  having  a  face 


CUEIOSITIES    OF    LANGUAGE.  415 

denoting  shame.  It  is  from  the  Anglo-Saxon,  sceam/aest, 
protected  by  shame.  '"  Surname "  is  from  the  French, 
siirnom,  meaning  additional  name,  and  should  not,  there- 
fore, be  spelled  "sirnaine,"  as  if  it  meant  the  name  of 
one's  sire.  "  Freemason ''  is  not  half  Saxon,  but  is  from 
ihQ  YvQnc\\,  fn;r('ma<;<>H,  brother  mason.  "Foolscap"  is  a 
corruption  of  the  Italian,  foglio  capo,  a  full -sized  sheet 
of  paper.  "•Country-dance"  is  a  corruption  of  the  French 
contre-danse.  in  which  the  partners  stand  in  opposite  lines. 

"  Bishop,"  which  looks  like  an  Anglo-Saxon  word,  is 
from  the  Greek.  It  means  primarily  an  overseer,  in  Latin 
episcopus,  which  the  Saxons  broke  down  into  "biscop," 
and  then  softened  into  "  bishop."  There  was  formerly  an 
adjective  "  bishoply  " ;  but  as,  after  the  Norman  Conc^uest, 
the  bishops,  and  those  who  discussed  their  rights  and 
duties,  used  French  and  Latin  rather  than  English,  "  epis- 
copal "  has  taken  its  place.  Among  the  foreign  w^ords 
most  frequently  corrupted  are  the  names  of  plants,  which 
gardeners,  not  understanding,  change  into  words  that 
sound  like  the  true  ones,  and  with  which  they  are  familiar. 
In  their  new  costume  they  often  lose  all  their  original 
significance  and  beauty.  To  this  source  of  corruption  we 
owe  such  words  as  '"dandelion,"  from  the  French,  dent  de 
lion,  lion's  tooth;  "rosemary,"  from  ma  inarinus;  "quar- 
ter-sessions rose,"  the  meaningless  name  of  the  beautiful 
rose  des  qiiatre  saisouK;  "  Jerusalem  artichoke,"  into  which, 
with  a  ludicrous  disregard  for  geography,  we  have  meta- 
morphosed the  sunflower  artichoke,  arficiocco  ffirasolc, 
whicli  cauie  to  us  from  l'i;ry.  through  Italy;  and  ""sparrow- 
grass."  wliicli   we  liave  substituted   for   '"asparagus." 

Animals  have  fared  no  better  than  plants;  the  same 
dislike    of    outlandish    words,    which    are    meaningless    to 


416  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

(hem,  leads  .sailors  to  corrapt  Belleroplinn  into  "  Billy 
Ruffian,"  and  hostlers  to  convert  Othello  and  Desdernona 
into  "Odd  Fellow  and  Thursday  morning,"  and  Lara- 
procles  into  "Lamb  and  Pickles."  The  souris  donneuse, 
or  sleeping  mouse,  has  been  transformed  into  a  "dor- 
mouse"; the  hog-fish,  or  porcplsce,  as  Spenser  terms  hira, 
is  disguised  as  a  "porpoise";  and  the  French  ecrpvisse 
turns  up  a  "crayfish"  or  "crawfish."  The  transformations 
of  the  latter  word,  which  has  passed  through  three  lan- 
guages before  attaining  its  present  form,  are  among  the 
most  surprising  feats  of  verbal  legerdemain.  Starting  on 
its  career  as  the  old  High  German  krebiz,  it  next  appears 
in  English  as  "crab,"  and  in  German  as  krebs,  or  "crab," 
from  the  grabbing  or  clutching  action  of  the  animal. 
Next  it  crosses  the  Rhine,  and  becomes  the  French  ecrevisse; 
then  crosses  the  Channel,  and  takes  the  form  of  krevys; 
and,  last  of  all,  with  a  double  effort  at  anglicizing,  it 
appears  in  modern  English  as  "crawfish"  or  "crayfish." 
The  last  two  words  noticed  illustrate  the  tendency  which 
is  so  strong,  in  the  corruption  of  words,  to  invent  new 
forms  which  shall  be  appropriate  as  well  as  significant, 
other  examples  of  which  we  have  in  "wormwood"  from 
u-ermuth,  "lanthorn"  from  laterna,  "beefeater"  from 
hiiffetier,  "  rakehell  "  from  mcaille,  "  catchrogue  "  from  the 
Norman-French  cachreau,  a  bum-bailifi",  and  '"  shoot "  for 
chute,  a  fall  or  rapid.  So  the  French,  hefroi,  a  strong- 
hold or  tower, — a  movable  tower  of  several  stories  used  in 
besieging, — has  been  corrupted  into  "  belfry,"  though  there 
is  no  such  French  word  as  "  bell." 

Often  the  corrupted  form  gives  birth  to  a  wholly  false 
explanation.  Thus  in  the  proverbial  donnir  comme  line 
taupe,   which  has  been   twisted   into  the    phrase  "to    sleep 


CURIOSITIES   OF   LANGUAGE.  417 

like  a  top,""  there  is  no  trace  of  the  mole;  and  the  cor- 
ruption of  acheter,  to  buy,  into  "achat," — which  in  the 
fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries  was  in  London  the  word 
for  trading,  and  was  first  pronounced  and  then  written 
"acat,'" — led  to  the  story  that  Whittington,  the  famous  Lord 
Mayor,  obtained  his  wealth  by  selling  and  re-selling  "  a 
cat."  There  is  no  hint  in  "somerset"'  of  its  derivation 
from  the  Italian,  soprasalto,  an  overleap,  through  the 
French,  sohresault,  and  the  early  English,  to  "somersault"; 
nor  would  the  shrewdest  guesser  ever  discover  in  /aire  tin 
faux  pas,  to  commit  a  blunder,  the  provincial  saying,  "to 
make  a  fox's  paw."  The  word  "ceiling,"  from  the  old 
French  seel^  "a  seal,"  was  formerly  written  "seeling,"  and 
meant  a  wainscoating,  a  covering  with  boards  for  the  pur- 
pose of  sealing  up  chinks  and  cracks.  The  spelling  was 
changed  from  an  opinion  that  the  word  is  derived  from 
del,  which  means  "heaven"  and  "a  canopy." 

Among  the  most  frequent  corruptions  are  the  names  of 
places  and  persons.  Thus  Penne,  Coombe,  and  Ick,  the 
former  name  of  Falmouth,  has  been  transformed  into 
"  Penny-come-quick  " ;  and  the  corruption  of  Chateau  Vert 
into  "Shotover"'  has  led  to  the  legend  that  Little  John 
"shot  over"  the  hill  of  that  name  near  Oxford,  England. 
Leightoit-heau-clescrt  has  been  converted  into  "  Leighton- 
Buzzard";  Bridge- Walter,  in  Somersetshire,  into  "Bridge- 
water."  The  Chartreuse  has  become  the  "  Charter-House." 
Slieremoniers  Lane,  so  called  because  the  artisans  dwelt 
there  whose  business  it  was  to  sheer  or  cut  bullion  into 
shape  for  the  die,  became  first  "  Sheremongers  Lane,"  and 
then,  from  its  nearness  to  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  and  an 
analogy  with  Amen  Corner  and  Paternoster  Row,  passed 
into  "Sermon  Lane."     The  origin  of  the  well  known  legend 


418  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

of  Bishop  Hatto,  who  forestalled  the  corn  from  the  poor, 
and  was  devoured  in  his  fortress  on  the  Rhine  by  rats,  is 
owing,  it  is  said,  to  a  corruption  of  the  name  of  the  maut- 
thnrm,  or  custom-house,  into  the  niause-thtirm,  or  "Mouse- 
tower."  The  Cologne  myth  of  the  eleven  thousand  virgins 
is  supposed  by  an  English  philologist  to  have  sprung  from 
the  name  of  St.  Undeceniilla,  a  virgin  martyr.  "The  in- 
sertion of  a  single  letter  in  the  calendar  has  changed  this 
name  into  the  form  '  Undccem  milUa  Virg.  Mart.'  The 
bones  of  the  eleven  thousand,  which  are  reverently  shown 
to  the  pious  i)ilgrim,  have  been  pronounced  by  Professor 
Owen  to  comprise  the  remains  of  almost  all  the  quadrupeds 
indigenous  to  the  district."  The  name  '"Gypsies"  is  a 
misnomer  springing  out  of  an  error  in  ethnology.  When 
they  first  appeared  in  Europe,  nearly  five  centuries  ago, 
their  dark  complexion  and  their  unknown  language  led 
men  to  suppose  that  they  were  Egyptians,  which  woi'd  was 
corrupted  into  "Gypsies."  Boulogne  Mouth  was  corrupted 
by  the  British  sailors  into  "Bull  and  Mouth";  and  Surajah 
Dowlah,  the  name  of  the  Bengal  prince  who  figured  in 
the  famous  Black  Hole  atrocit}',  the  British  soldiers  per- 
sisted in  anglicizing  into  "Sir  Roger  Dowlas"!  "Bed- 
lam" is  a  corruption  of  Bethlehem,  and  gets  its  mean- 
ing from  a  London  prior}^  St.  Mary's  of  Bethlehem,  which 
was  converted  into  a  lunatic^^sylum. 

"  To  curry  favor  "  is  said  to  be  a  corrupt  translation  of 
the  French  proverbial  phrase  efriller  Faxrecn!,  "  to  curry 
the  chestnut  horse."  It  was  usual  to  make  a  proi)er  name 
of  the  color  of  a  horse,  as  Bayard,  Dun,  Ball,  Favel,  etc. 
Hence  the  proverbs,  "To  have  Ball  in  the  stable,"  "Dun 
in  the  mire,"  "  To  curry  Favel,"  in  which  last  some  un- 
known   Bentlev  substituted  '"  favor "  for  Favel  when    the 


CURIOSITIES    OF    LAXGUAGE.  419 

meaning  cf  the  latter  had  ceased  to  be  understood.  An- 
other striking  illustration  of  the  freaks  of  popular  usage 
by  which  the  etymology  of  words  is  obscured,  is  the  word 
"  causeway."  Mr.  W.  W.  Skeat,  in  a  late  number  of 
"  Notes  and  Queries."  states  that  the  old  spelling  of  the 
word  was  "calcies."  The  Latin  was  calceata  via,  a  road 
made  with  lime;  hence  the  Spanish,  calzadd,  a  paved  way, 
and  the  modern  French,  cJiax^sec  "The  English  Word," 
Mr.  Skeats  says,  "used  to  be  more  often  spelled  'causey,' 
as,  for  instance,  by  Cotgrave;  and  popular  etymology, 
always  on  the  alert  to  infuse  some  sort  of  meaning  into 
a  strange  word,  turned  '  causey  '  into  '  causeway,'  with  the 
trifling  drawback  that,  while  we  all  know  what  '  way ' 
means,  no  one  can  extract  any  sense  out  of  '  cause.'  " 

Words  from  the  dead  languages  have  naturally  under- 
gone the  most  signal  corruptions,  man\'  of  them  completely 
disguising  the  derivation.  Sometimes  tlie  word  is  con- 
densed, as  in  "alms."  from  the  Greek  iliriiuinir^ri,  in  early 
English,  "almesse,"  now  cut  down  to  four  letters;  "sum- 
mons," a  legal  term,  abbreviated  (like  the  //.  fa.  of  the 
lawyers)  from  sithiiioneas;  "palsy,"  an  abridgment  of 
"paralysis,"  literally  a  relaxation;  "quin-sy,"  in  French 
esquinancie,  which,  strange  to  say,  is  the  same  word  as 
"  synagogue,"  coming,  like  this  last,  from  tr/'y^^  together, 
and  «yw,  to  draw.  "Megrim"  is  a  corruption  of  "hemi- 
crany,"  a  pain  affecting  half  of  the  head.  "  Treacle,"  now 
applied  only  to  molasses  or  sirup,  was  originally  viper's 
flesh  made  into  a  medicine  for  the  viper's  bite.  It  is  called 
in  French  flieruKjite,  from  a  corresponding  Greek  word; 
in  early  English,  "  triacle."  "  Zero  "  is  a  contraction  of  the 
Italian  zcphiro,  a  zephyr,  a  breatli  of  air,  a  nothing.  Another 
name   for  it    is  "cipher,"   from   the  Arabic,   cl/r,  empty. 


420  words;  tiieiii  use  axd  abuse. 

CONTRADICTOKV    MEANINGS. 

Among  the  curious  phenomena  of  language  one  of  the 
most  singular  is  the  use  of  the  same  word  in  two  distinct 
senses,  directly  opposed  to  each  other.  Ideas  are  associated 
in  the  mind  not  only  by  resemblance  but  by  contrast;  and 
thus  the  same  root,  slightly  modified,  may  express  the  most 
opposite  meanings.  A  striking  example  of  this,  is  the 
word  "  fast,"  which  is  full  of  contradictory  meanings.  A 
clock  is  called  "  fast,"  when  it  goes  too  quickly;  but  a  man 
is  told  to  stand  "  fast,"  when  he  is  desired  to  stand  still. 
Men  "fast"  when  they  have  nothing  to  eat;  and  they  eat 
"fast"  after  a  long  abstinence:  "Fast"  men,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  are  apt  to  be  veiy  "  loose  "  in  their  habits. 
When  "fast"  is  used  in  the  sense  of  "abstinence,"  the 
idea  may  be,  as  in  the  Latin,  abstineo,  holding  back  from 
food;  or  the  word  may  come  from  the  Gothic,  fast  an,  "to 
keep  "  or  "  observe," —  that  is,  the  ordinance  of  the  church. 
The  verb  "to  overlook"  is  used  in  two  contradictory 
senses;  as,  he  overlooked  the  men  at  work,  he  overlooked 
the  error. 

The  word  "  nervous  "  may  mean  either  possessing  or 
wanting  nerve.  A  "  nervous "  writer  is  one  who  has 
force  and  energy;  a  "nervous"  man  is  one  who  is  weak, 
sensitive  to  trifles,  easily  excited.  The  word  "  post."  from 
the  Latin  j^osHidh,  placed,  is  used  in  the  most  various 
senses.  We  speak  of  a  "post "-office,  of  "post "-haste,  of 
"  post  "-horses,  and  of  "post"-ing  a  ledger.  The  contra- 
diction in  these  meanings  is  more  apparent  than  real.  The 
idea  of  "  placing  "  is  common  to  them  all.  Before  the  in- 
vention of  railways,  letters  were  transmitted  from  place  to 
place  (or  post  to  post)  by  relays  of  horses  stationed  at  in- 


CURIOSITIES    OF    LAXGUAGE.  421 

tervals  so  that  no  delay  ini,<flit  occur.  The  "  post  "-office  used 
this  means  of  communication,  and  the  horses  were  said  to 
travel  "  post  "-haste.  To  "  post "  a  ledger  is  to  place  or 
register  its  several  items. 

The  word  "to  let"  generally  means  to  permit;  but  in 
the  Bible,  in  Shakespeare,  and  in  legal  phraseology,  it  often 
has  the  very  op|)Osite  meaning.  Thus  Hamlet  says,  "Fll 
make  a  ghost  of  him  that  lets  me,"  that  is,  interferes  with 
or  obstructs  me;  and  in  law  books  "without  let  or  hin- 
drance" is  a  phrase  of  frequent  occurrence.  It  should  be 
remarked,  however,  that  "  to  let,"  in  the  first  sense,  is  from 
the  Saxon,  laetan;  in  the  second,  from  letjan.  The  word 
"  to  cleave  "  may  mean  either  to  adhere  to  closely,  as  when 
Cowper  says,  "  Sophistry  cleaves  close  and  protects  sin's 
rotten  trunk";  or  it  may  mean  to  split  or  to  rend  asunder, 
as  in  the  sentence,  "  He  cleaved  the  stick  at  one  blow." 
According  to  Miitzner,  the  word  in  the  first  sense  is  from 
the  Anglo-Saxon,  deofan^  cJiifan;  in  the  last  sense,  it  is 
from  difan,  dijian.  The  word  "dear"  has  the  two  mean- 
ings of  "  prized  "  because  you  have  it,  and  "  expensive  " 
because  you  want  it.  The  word  "lee"  has  very  different 
acceptations  in  "  lee  "-side  and  "  lee  "-shore. 

The  word  "mistaken"  has  quite  opposite  meanings. 
"  You  are  mistaken  "  may  mean  "  You  mistake,"  or  "  You 
are  misunderstood,"  or  "  taken  for  somebody  else."  In  the 
line 

'■'■Mistaken  souls  tliat  drcain  of  heaven," 

in  a  popular  hymn,  the  word  is  used,  of  course,  in  the 
former  sense.  The  adjective  "mortal"  means  both  "dead- 
ly" and  "liable  to  death."  Of  the  large  number  of  adjec- 
tives ending  in  "able"  or  "  ible,"  some  have  a  subjective 
and  others  an  objective  sense,     A  "  terrible  "  sight  is  one 


4:22  'vvouDS;  their  use  and  aruse. 

that  is  able  to  inspire  terror;  but  a  "readable"  book  is 
one  which  you  can  read.  It  is  said  that  the  word  "wit" 
is  used  in  Pope's  "Essay  on  Criticism"  with  at  least  seven 
diflPerent  meanings. 

The  prefixes  "  i;n  "  and  "  in  "  are  equivocal.  Commonly 
they  liavc  a  negative  force,  as  in  "  unnecessar}^"  "  incom- 
plete." But  sometimes,  both  in  verbs  and  adjectives,  they 
have  a  positive  or  intensive  meaning,  as  in  the  words 
"intense,"  "infatuated,"  "invaluable."  To  "invigorate" 
one's  physical  system  by  exercise,  is  not  to  lessen,  but  to 
increase  one's  energy.  The  verb  "  unloose "  should,  by 
analogy,  signify  "  to  tie,"  just  as  "untie  "  means  "  to  loose." 
"Inhabitable"  should  signify  "not  habitable,"  according 
to  the  most  frequent  use  of  "in."  To  "unravel"  means 
the  same  as  "to  ravel";  to  "unrip"  the  same  as  "to  rip." 
Johnson  sanctions  the  use  of  the  negative  prefix  in  these 
two  words,  but  Richardson  and  Webster  condemn  it  as 
superfluous.  Walton,  in  his  "Angler,"  tells  an  amusing 
anecdote  touching  the  two  words.  "  We  heard,"  he  says, 
"  a  high  contention  amongst  the  beggars,  whether  it  was 
easiest  to  'rip'  a  cloak  or  'unrip'  a  cloak.  One  beggar 
affirmed  it  was  all  one;  but  that  was  denied,  by  asking 
her,  if  doing  and  undoing  were  all  one.  Then  another 
said,  'twas  easiest  to  unrip  a  cloak,  for  that  was  to  let  it 
alone;  but  she  was  answered  by  asking  how  she  could 
unrip  it,  if  she  let  it  alone." 

This  opposition  in  the  meanings  of  a  word  is  a  phenom- 
enon not  altogether  peculiar  to  the  English  language.  In 
Greek,  6i>d%tt'^  has  the  seemingly  contradictory  meanings 
of  "  to  move  hastily,"  and  "  to  sit " ;  yjj^^'."-  means  both  "  use  " 
and  "need";  and  Aa<«  means  both  "to  wish"  and  "'to 
take."     In  Latin,  sacer  means  "set  apart"  or  "tabooed," 


CURIOSITIES    OF    LANGUAGE.  423 

and  uniciffi  implies  singularity, —  unitas,  association.  Many 
other  examples  might  be  cited  to  show  that  "  as  rays  of 
light  may  be  reflected  and  refracted  in  all  possible  ways 
from  the  primary  direction,  so  the  meaning  of  a  word 
may  be  deflected  from  its  original  bearing  in  a  variety  of 
manners;  and  consequently  we  cannot  well  reach  the 
primitive  force  of  the  term  unless  we  know  the  precise 
gradations  through   which  it  has  gone." 

Several  writers  on  our  language  have  noticed  a  singu- 
lar tendency  to  limit  or  narrow  the  signification  of  certain 
words,  whose  etymology  would  suggest  a  far  wider  appli- 
cation. Why  should  we  not  "  retaliate "  (that  is,  pay 
back  in  kind,  res,  talis)  kindnesses  as  well  as  injuries? 
Why  should  we  "resent"  (feel  again)  insults,  and  not 
aff'ectionate  words  and  deeds?  Why  should  our  hate,  ani- 
mosity, hostility,  and  other  bad  passions,  be  "  inveterate  " 
(that  is,  gain  strength  by  age),  but  our  better  feelings, 
love,  kindness,  charity,  never?  Byron  showed  a  true 
appreciation  of  the  better  uses  to  which  the  word  might 
be  put,  when  he  subscribed  a  letter  to  a  friend,  "  Yours 
inveterately,  Byron." 

In  some  of  our  nouns  there  is  a  nice  distinction  of 
meaning  between  the  singular  and  the  plural.  A  "  min- 
ute" is  a  fraction  of  time;  "minutes"  are  notes  of  a 
speech,  conversation,  etc.  The  "manner"  in  which  a  man 
enters  a  drawing-room  inay  be  unexceptionable,  while  his 
"manners"  are  very  bad.  When  the  "Confederates" 
threatened  to  pull  down  the  American  "colors"  at  New 
Orleans,  they  did  it  under  ''  color "  of  right.  A  person 
was  once  asked  whether  a  certain  lawyer  had  got  rich 
by  his  practice.  "  No,"  was  the  sarcastic  reply,  "  but  by 
bis  practices." 


CHAPTER   XVI. 

COMMON   IMPROPRIETIES   OF   SPEECH. 

In  words,  as  fashions,  the  same  rule  will  hold. 
Alike  fantastic  if  too  new  or  old; 
Be  not  the  first  by  whom  the  new  are  tried, 
Nor  yet  the  last  to  lay  the  old  aside.— Pope. 

If  a  gentleman  be  to  etudy  any  language,  it  ought  to  be  that  of  his  own 
country. — Locke. 

Aristocracy  and  exclnsiveness  tend  to  final  overthrow,  in  language  as  well 
as  in  politics.— W.  D.  Whitney. 

People  who  write  essays  to  prove  that  though  a  word  in  fact  means  one 
thing,  it  ought  to  mean  another,  or  that  though  all  well  educated  Englishmen 
do  conspire  to  use  this  expression,  they  ought  to  use  that,  are  simply  bores. 
— Edinburgh  Review. 

/^NE  of  the  most  gratifying  signs  of  the  times  is  the 
^^  deep  interest  which  both  our  scholars  and  our  people 
are  beginning  to  manifest  in  the  study  of  our  noble  English 
tongue.  Perhaps  nothing  has  contributed  more  to  awaken 
a  public  interest  in  this  matter,  and  to  call  attention  to 
some  of  the  commonest  improprieties  of  speech,  than  the 
publication  of  "The  Queen's  English"  and  "The  Dean's 
English,"  and  the  various  criticisms  which  have  been  pro- 
voked in  England  and  in  the  United  States  by  the  Moon- 
Alford  controvei'.sy.  Hundreds  of  persons  who  before  felt 
a  profound  indifference  to  this  subject,  have  had  occasion 
to  thank  the  Dean  for  awakening  their  curiosity  in  regard 
to  it;  and  hundreds  more  who  otherwise  would  never  have 
read  his  dogmatic  small-talk,  or  Mr.  Moon's  trenchant 
dissection  of  it,  have  suddenly  found  themselves,  in  con- 
sequence of  the   newspaper   criticisms  of  the  two  books, 

424 


COM.MOX    IMPROPRIETIES    OF    SPEECH.  iio 

keenly  interested  in  questions  of  grammar,  and  now,  with 
their  appetites  whetted,  will  continue  the  study  of  their 
own  language,  till  they  have  mastered  its  difficulties,  and 
familiarized  themselves  with  all  its  idioms  and  idiotisms. 
Of  such  discussions  we  can  hardly  have  too  many,  and  just 
now  they  are  imperiously  needed  to  check  the  deluge  of 
barbarisms,  solecisms,  and  improprieties,  with  which  our 
language  is  threatened.  Not  only  does  political  freedom 
make  eveiy  man  in  America  an  inventor,  alike  of  labor- 
saving  machines  and  of  labor-saving  words,  but  the  mixture 
of  nationalities  is  constantly  coining  and  exchanging  new 
forms  of  speech,  of  which  our  busy  Bartletts,  in  their  lists 
of  Americanisms,  find  it  impossible  to  keep  account. 

It  is  not  merely  our  spoken  language  that  is  dis- 
figured by  these  blemishes;  but  our  written  language, — 
the  prose  of  the  leading  English  authors, —  exhibits  more 
slovenliness  and  looseness  of  diction  than  is  found  in  any 
other  literature.  That  this  is  due  in  part  to  the  very 
character  of  the  language  itself,  there  can  be  no  doubt. 
Its  simplicity  of  structure  and  its  copiousness  both  tend 
to  prevent  its  being  used  with  accuracy  and  care;  and  it 
is  so  hospitable  to  alien  words  that  it  needs  more  powerful 
securities  against  revolution  than  other  languages  of  less 
heterogeneous  composition.  But  the  chief  cause  must  be 
found  in  the  character  of  the  English-speaking  race. 
There  is  in  our  very  blood  a  certain  lawlessness,  which 
makes  us  intolerant  of  syntactical  rules,  and  restive  under 
pedagogical  restraints.  "Our  sturdy  English  ancestors," 
says  Blackstone,  "  held  it  beneath  the  condition  of  a  free- 
man to  appear,  or  to  do  any  other  act,  at  the  precise 
time  appointed."  The  same  proud,  independent  spirit 
which  made  the  Saxons  of  old  rebel  against  the  servitude 


42G  AVOKDs;  theik  use  a>,'d  abuse. 

of  punctuality,  prompts  their  descendants  to  spurn  the 
yoke  of  graminar  and  purism.  In  America  this  scorn  of 
obedience,  whether  to  political  authority  or  philological, 
is  fostered  and  intensified  by  the  very  genius  of  our  insti- 
tutions. We  seem  to  doubt  whether  we  are  entirely  free, 
unless  we  apply  the  Declaration  of  Independence  to  our  9 
language,  and  carry  the  Monroe  doctrine  even  into  our 
grammar. 

The  degree  to  which  this  lawlessness  has  been  carried 
will  be  seen  more  strikingly  if  we  compare  our  English 
literature  with  the  literature  of  France.  It  has  been 
justly  said  that  the  language  of  that  country  is  a  science 
in  itself,  and  the  labor  bestowed  on  the  acquisition  of  it 
has  the  effect  of  vividly  impressing  on  the  mind  both  the 
faults  and  the  beauties  of  every  writer's  style.  Method 
and  perspicuity  are  its  veiy  essence;  and  there  is  hardly 
a  writer  of  note  who  does  not  attend  to  these  requisites 
with  scrupulous  care.  Let  a  French  writer  of  distinction 
violate  any  cardinal  rule  of  grammar,  and  he  is  pounced 
upon  instantly  by  the  critics,  and  laughed  at  from  Calais 
to  Marseilles.  When  Boileau,  who  is  a  marvel  of  verbal 
and  grammatical  correctness,  made  a  slip  in  the  iirst  line 
of  his  Ninth  Satire, 

"C"est  d  vous,  nion  Esprit,  a  qui  je  veux  parler," 

the  grammatical  sensibility  of  the  French  ear  was  shocked 
to  a  degree  that  we,  who  tolerate  the  grossest  solecisms, 
find  it  hard  to  estimate.  For  two  centuries  the  blunder 
has  been  quoted  by  every  writer  on  grammar,  and  im- 
pressed on  the  memory  of  every  schoolboy.  Indeed,  such 
is  the  national  fastidiousness  on  this  subject,  that  it  has 
been  doubted  whether  a  single  line  in  Boileau   has   been 


COilMOX    IMrKOPKIETIES   OF    SPEECH.  427 

SO  often  quoted  for  its  beauty,  as  this  unfortunate  one 
for  its  lack  of  grammar.  When  did  an  English  or  an 
American  writer  thus  offend  the  critical  ears  of  his  coun- 
trymen, even  though  he  were  an  Alison,  sinning  against 
Liudley  Murray  on  every  page? 

We  are  no  friends  to  hypercriticism,  or  to  that  finical 
niceness  which  cares  more  for  the  body  than  for  the  soul 
of  language,  more  for  the  outward  expression  than  for 
the  thought  which  it  incarnates.  Too  much  rigor  is  as 
unendurable  as  laxity.  It  is,  no  doubt,  possible  to  be  so 
over-nice  in  the  use  of  words  and  the  construction  of  sen- 
tences as  to  sap  the  vitality  of  our  speech.  We  may  so 
refine  our  expression,  by  continual  straining  in  our  crit- 
ical sieves,  as  to  impair  both  the  strength  and  the  flexi- 
bility of  our  noble  English  tongue.  There  are  some 
verbal  critics,  who,  apparently  go  so  far  as  to  hold  that 
every  word  must  have  an  invariable  meaning,  and  that 
all  relations  of  thoughts  must  be  indicated  by  absolute 
and  invariable  formulas,  thus  reducing  verbal  expression 
to  the  rigid  inflexibility  of  a  mathematical  equation.  If 
we  understand  Mr.  Moon's  censures  of  Murray  and  Alford, 
some  of  them  are  based  on  the  assumption  that  an  ellipsis 
is  rarely,  if  ever,  permissible  in  English  speech.  We  have 
no  sympathy  with  such  extremists,  nor  with  the  verbal 
purists  who  challenge  all  words  and  phrases  that  cannot  be 
found  in  the  "  wells  of  English  undefiled."  that  have  been 
open  for  more  than  a  hundred  years.  We  must  take  the 
good  with  the  bad  in  the  incessant  changes  and  masquer- 
ades of  language.  "The  severe  judgment  of  the  scholar 
may  condemn  as  verbiage  that  undergrowth  of  words 
which  threatens  to  choke  up  and  impoverish  the  great 
roots  that  have  occupied   the  soil  from   the  earliest  times; 


428  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

he  may  apprehend  wreck  and  disaster  to  tlie  fixedness  of 
language  when  he  sees  words  loosened  from  their  etymons, 
and  left  to  drift  upon  the  ocean  at  the  mercy  of  wind  and 
tide;  and  he  is  justified  in  every  seasonable  and  reasonable 
attempt  he  makes  to  reconcile  cunx'nt  and  established  sig- 
nifications with  the  sanction  of  authority."  But  it  must 
not  be  forgotten  that  language  is  a  living,  organic  thing, 
and  by  the  very  law  of  its  life  must  always  be  in  a  fluc- 
tuating state.  To  petrify  it  into  immutable  forms,  to  pre- 
serve it  as  one  preserves  fruits  and  flowers  in  spirits  of 
wine  and  herbariums,  is  as  hopeless  as  it  would  be  unde- 
sirable, if  we  would  have  it  a  medium  for  the  ever-chang- 
ing thoughts  of  man. 

Language  is  a  growing  thing,  as  truly  as  a  tree;  and  as 
a  tree,  while  it  casts  off  some  leaves,  will  continually  put 
forth  others,  so  a  language  will  be  perpetually  growing 
and  expanding  with  the  discoveries  of  science,  the  exten- 
sion of  commerce,  and  the  progress  of  thought.  Such 
events  as  the  growth  of  the  Roman  Empire,  the  introduc- 
tion of  Christianity',  the  rise  of  the  scholastic  and  of  the 
mystic  theology  in  the  middle  ages,  the  irruption  of  the 
northern  barbarians  into  Itah',  the  establishment  of  the 
Papacy,  the  introduction  of  the  feudal  system,  the  Cru- 
sades, the  Reformation,  the  French  Revolution,  the  Ameri- 
can Civil  War,  give  birth  to  new  ideas,  which  clamor  for 
new  words  to  express  them.  Every  age  thus  enriches 
language  with  new  accessions  of  beauty  and  strength. 
Not  only  are  new  words  coined,  but  old  ones  continually 
take  on  new  senses;  and  it  is  only  in  the  transition  period, 
before  they  have  established  themselves  in  the  general 
favor  of  good  speakers  and  writers,  that  purity  of  style 
requires  them  to  be  shunned.     Those  who  are  so  ignorant 


COMMON"   IMPROPRIETIES   OF   SPEECH.  429 

of  the  laws  of  language  as  to  resist  its  expansion, —  who 
declare  that  it  has  attained  at  any  time  the  limit  of  its 
development,  and  seek  by  philological  bulls  to  check  its 
growth, —  will  find  that,  like  a  vigorous  forest  tree,  it  will 
defy  any  shackles  that  men  may  bind  about  it;  that  it  will 
reck  as  little  of  their  decrees  as  did  the  advancing  ocean 
of  those  of  Canute.  The  critics  who  make  such  attempts 
do  not  see  that  the  immobility  of  language  would  be  the 
immobility  of  history.  They  forget  that  many  of  the 
purest  words  in  our  language  were  at  one  time  startling 
novelties,  and  that  even  the  dainty  terms  in  which  they 
challenge  each  new-comer,  though  now  naturalized,  had 
once  to  fight  their  way  inch  by  inch.  Shakespeare  ridi- 
cules "  element ";  Fulke,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  ob- 
jects to  such  ink-horn  terms  as  "  rational,"  "  scandal," 
"homicide,"  "ponderous,"  and  "prodigious";  Dryden  cen- 
sures "  embarrass,"  "  grimace,"  "  repartee,"  "  foible," 
"tour,"  and  "rally";  Swift  denounces  "hoax"  as  low 
and  vulgar;  Pope  condemns  "witless,"  "welkin,"  and 
"dulcet";  and  Franklin,  who  could  draw  from  the  clouds 
the  electric  fluid  which  now  carries  language  with  the 
speed  of  lightning  from  land  to  land,  vainly  struggled 
against  the  introduction  of  the  words  "to  advocate"  and 
"  to  notice."  In  the  "  New  World  of  Words,"  by  Edward 
Phillips,  published  in  1678,  there  is  a  long  list  of  words 
which  he  declared  sliould  be  either  used  warily  or  rejected 
as  barbarous.  Among  these  words  are  the  following, 
wliich  arc  all  in  good  use  to-day:  autograph,  aurist,  liib- 
liograph,  circumstantiate,  evangelize,  ferocious,  holograph, 
inimical,  misanthropist,  misogynist,  and  syllogize. 

The  word  "  Fatherland  "  seems  so  natural  that  we  are 
apt  to  regard    it  as   an    old   wonl;    yet   the   elder   Disraeli 


430  words;  tiieiii  use  axd  abuse. 

claims  the  honor  of  liaving  introduced  it.  Macaulay  tells 
us  that  the  word  "gutted,"  which  was  doubtless  objected 
to  as  vulgar,  was  first  used  on  the  night  in  which  Jaines  II 
fled  from  London:  "The  king's  printing-house  .  .  .  was, 
to  use  a  coarse  metaphor,  which  then,  for  the  first  time, 
came  into  fashion,  completely  guttedy  How  much  circum- 
locution is  saved  by  the  word  "antecedents"  (formerly  a 
grammatical  term  only),  in  its  new  sense,  denoting  a  man's 
past  history;  with  reference  to  which  Punch  says  it  would 
be  more  satisfactory  to  know  something  of  a  suspected 
man's  relatives  than  of  his  antecedents!  What  a  happy, 
ingenious  use  of  an  old  word  is  that  of  "  telescope "  to 
describe  a  railway  accident,  when  the  force  of  a  collision 
causes  the  cars  to  run  or  fit  into  each  other,  like  the 
shortening  slides  of  a  telescope!  The  term  is  so  jiicturesque 
and  so  convenient  in  avoiding  a  periphrasis,  that  it  cannot 
fail  to  be  stamped  with  the  seal  of  good  usage.  How 
admirably  was  a  real  void  in  the  vocabulary  filled  by  the 
word  "squatter,"  when  it  was  first  coined!  The  man  who 
first  uttered  it  gave  vivid  expression  to  an  idea  which  had 
existed  vaguely  in  the  brains  of  thousands;  and  it  was 
hardly  spoken  before  it  was  on  every  tongue.  Coleridge 
observes  truly  that  any  new  word  expressing  a  fact  or 
relationship,  not  expressed  by  any  other  word  in  the  lan- 
guage, is  a  new  organ  of  thought;  and  how  true  is  this 
of  the  terms  "solidarity"  (as  in  the  phrase  "solidarity 
of  the  peoples  "),  and  "  international,"  both  of  which  ex- 
press novel  and  characteristic  conceptions  of  our  own 
century.  The  latter  word  is  a  coinage  of  Jeremy  Bentham, 
to  whom  we  are  also  indebted  for  "  codify,""  "  maximise," 
and  "minimise."  The  little  word  "its"  had  to  force  its 
way  into  the  language,  against  the  opposition  of  "  correct " 


COMMOX    IMPKOrRIETIES    OF    SPEECH.  431 

speakers  and  writers,  on  the  ground  of  its  apparent  analogy 
with  the  other  English  possessives. 

Dr.  Johnson  objected  to  the  word  "  dun ""  in  Lady  Mac- 
beth's  famous  soliloquy,  declaring  that  the  "  efficacy  of  this 
invocation  is  destroyed  by  the  insertion  of  an  epithet  now 
seldom  heard  but  in  the  stable: — " 

"Come,  thick  night, 
And  pall  thee  in  the  dunnest  smoke  of  hell." 

It  was  a  notion  of  the  great  critic  and  lexicographer,  with 
which  his  mind  was  long  haunted,  that  the  language  should 
be  refined  and  fixed  so  as  finally  to  exclude  all  rustic  and 
vulgar  elements  from  the  authorized  vocabulary  of  the  let- 
tered and  polite.  Dryden  had  hinted  at  the  establishment 
of  an  academy  for  this  purpose,  and  Swift  thought  the  Gov- 
ernment "  should  devise  some  means  for  ascertaining  and 
JixiiKj  the  laiKjHdfje  forever,'''  after  the  necessary  alterations 
should  be  made  in  it. 

If  it  were  possible  to  exclude  needed  new  words  from  a 
language,  the  French  Academy  would  have  succeeded  in  its 
attempts  to  do  so,  consisting  as  it  did  of  the  chief  scholars  of 
France.  Not  content  with  crushing  political  liberty,  Rich- 
elieu sought  to  become  autocrat  of  the  French  language. 
No  word  was  to  be  uttered  anywhere  in  the  realm  until  he 
had  countersigned  it.  But  in  spite  of  all  the  efforts  of  his 
Academy  to  exercise  a  despotic  authority  over  the  French 
tongue,  new  words  have  continually  forced  their  way  in, 
and  so  they  Avill  continue  to  do  wliile  the  French  nation 
maintains  its  vitality,  in  spite  of  the  ]irotests  of  all  the 
purists  and  academicians  in  France.  "  They  that  will  fight 
custom  with  grammar."  says  Montaigne,  "are  fools";  and, 
with  the  limitations  to  bo  hereafter  stated,  the  remark  is 
just,  and  still  jiiore  true  of  those  who  triumphantly  appeal 


433  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

against  custom  to  tlio  dictionar}'-,  which  is  not  merely  a 
home  for  living  words,  but  a  cemetery  for  the  dead. 

Even  slang  words,  after  long  knocking,  will  often  gain 
admission  into  a  language,  like  pardoned  outlaws  received 
into  the  body  of  respectable  citizens.  We  need  not  add  to 
these,  words  coined  in  his  lofty  moods  by  the  poet,  who  is  a 
maker  by  the  very  right  of  his  name.  That  creative  energy 
which  distinguishes  him, — "  the  high-flying  liberty  of  con- 
ceit proper  to  the  poet,"' —  will,  of  course,  display  itself 
here,  and  the  all-fusing  imagination  will  at  once,  as  Trench 
has  remarked,  suggest  and  justify  audacities  in  speech 
which  would  not  be  tolerated  from  creeping  prose-writers. 
Great  liberties  may  be  allowed,  too,  within  certain  bounds, 
to  the  idiosyncrasies  of  all  great  writers.  We  love  the  rug- 
ged, gnarled  oak,  with  the  grotesque  contortions  of  its 
branches,  better  than  the  smoothly  clipped  uniformity  of 
the  Dutch  yew  tree.  Carlyleisms  may  therefore  be  tolerated 
from  the  master,  though  not  from  the  umhrce  that  spaniel 
him  at  the  heels,  and  feebly  echo  his  singularities  and  oddi- 
ties. A  style  that  has  no  smack  or  flavor  of  the  man  that 
uses  it  is  a  tasteless  style.  But  there  is  a  limit  even  to  the 
liberty  of  great  thinkers  in  coining  words.  It  must  not  de- 
generate into  license.  Coleridge  was  a  skilful  mint-master 
of  words,  yet  not  all  his  genius  can  reconcile  us  to  such  ex- 
pressions as  the  following,  in  a  letter  to  Sir  Humphrey 
Davy:  "I  was  a  well  meaning  sutor  who  had  ultra-crepi- 
dated  vvith  more  zeal  than  wisdom." 

No  one  would  hesitate  to  place  Isaac  Barrow  among  the 
greatest  masters  of  the  English  tongue;  yet  the  weighty 
thoughts  which  his  words  represented  did  not  prevent 
many  of  the  trial-pieces  which  he  coined  in  his  verbal  mint 
from  bein«  returned  on  his  hands.      Who  knows  the  mean- 


COM.MOX    IMPROPRIETIES    OF    SPEECH.  433 

ing  of  such  words  as  "  avoce,"  '"  acquist,"  "extund"?  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  abounds  in  such  hyperlatinistic  expressions 
as  "  bivious,"  "  quodlibetically,"  "  cunctation,"  to  which 
even  his  gorgeous  rhetoric  does  not  reconcile  the  reader. 
Charles  Lamb  has  "  agnise  "  and  "bourgeon."  Coleridge 
invents  "  extroitive,"  "  retroitlve,"  "  influencive";  Bentley, 
"  commentitious,"  "negoce,"  "exscribe."  Sydney  Smith 
was  continually  coining  words,  some  of  them  compounds 
from  the  homely  Saxon  idiom,  others  big-wig  classical  epi- 
thets, devised  with  scholar-like  precision,  and  exceedingly 
ludicrous  in  their  effect.  Thus  he  speaks  of  ''  frugiverous" 
children,  of  "  mastigophorous"  schoolmasters,  of  "fuga- 
cious" or  "  plumigerous "  captains;  of  "lachrymal  and 
suspirious "  clergymen;  of  people  who  are  "simious," 
and  people  who  are  "anserous";  he  enriches  the  Ian- 
gauge  with  the  expressive  hybrid,  "  Foolometer ";  and 
he  characterizes  the  September  sins  of  the  English  by 
the  awful  name  of  "  perdricide."  In  the  early  ages  of  our 
literature,  when  the  language  was  less  fixed,  and  there  were 
few  recognized  standards  of  expression,  writers  coined  words 
without  license,  supplying  the  place  of  correct  terms,  when 
they  did  not  occur  to  their  minds,  by  analogy  and  invention. 
But  a  bill  must  not  only  be  drawn  by  the  word-maker;  it 
must  also  be  accepted.  The  Emperor  Tiberius  was  very 
properly  told  that  he  might  give  citizenship  to  men,  but  not 
to  words.  All  innovations  in  speech,  every  new  term  intro- 
duced, should  harmonize  with  the  general  principles  of  the 
language.  No  new  phrase  should  be  admitted  which  is  not 
consonant  wifli  its  peculiar  genius,  or  which  does  violence 
to  its  fundamental  integrity.  Nor  should  any  form  of 
expression  be  tolerated  that  violates  the  universal  laws  of 
language.       As  Henry  lingers  has  well  said,  a  philosophical 


404  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

mind  will  consider  that,  wliatover  dfllection  may  have  taken 
place  in  the  original  principles  of  a  language,  whatever 
modification  of  form  it  may  have  undergone,  it  is,  at  each 
period  of  its  history,  the  product  of  a  slow  accumulation  and 
countless  multitude  of  associations,  which  can  neither  be 
hastily  formed  nor  hastily  dismissed;  that  these  associations 
extend  even  to  the  modes  of  spelling  and  pronouncing,  of 
inflecting  and  combining  words;  and  that  anything  which 
does  violence  to  such  associations  impaii'S,  for  the  time,  at 
least,  the  power  of  the  language. 

Even  good  usage  itself  is  but  a  proximate  and  strongly 
presumptive  test  of  purity.  Custom  is  not  an  absolute 
despotism,  though  it  approaches  very  nearly  to  that  char- 
acter. Its  decisions  are  generally  authoritative;  but,  as 
there  are  extreme  measures  which  even  oriental  despots 
cannot  put  into  execution  without  endangering  the  safety 
of  their  possessions,  so  there  are  things  which  custom  can- 
not do  without  endangering  the  fixity  and  purity  of  lan- 
guage. If  grammatical  monstrosities  exist  in  a  language, 
a  correct  taste  will  shun  them,  as  it  does  physical  deformi- 
ties in  the  arts  of  design.  Dean  Alford  defends  some  of 
his  own  indefensible  expressions  by  citing  the  authority 
of  the  Scripture;  but  authority  for  the  most  vicious  forms 
of  speech  can  be  found  in  all  our  writers,  not  excepting 
King  James's  translators, —  as  Mr.  Harrison  has  shown  by 
hundreds  of  examples  in  his  work  on  "The  English  Lan- 
guage." Take,  for  example,  the  following  sentence,  or 
part  of  a  sentence,  from  so  great  a  writer  as  Dean  Swift: 
"  Breaking  a  constitution  by  the  very  same  errors,  that 
so  many  have  been  broke  before."  Here,  in  a  sentence  of 
only  fifteen  words,  we  have  three  grammatical  errors, 
glaring,  and,   in  such  a  writer,  unpardonable.     We  smile 


COMMON    IMPROPRIETIES    OF    SPEECH.  435 

at  the  rustic  ignorance  which  has  engraved  on  a  Hamp- 
shire tombstone  such  lines  as 

"//im  shall  never  come  again  to  we; 
But  lis  shall  one  day  surely  go  to  he;" 

but  is  this  couplet  a  whit  more  ungrammatical  than  Scott's 
"I  know  not  whom  else  are  expected,"  in  "the  Pirate"; 
or  Southey's  sentence  in  "  the  Doctor,"  "  Gentle  reader,  let 
you  and  I,  in  like  manner,  endeavor  to  iiii[)rove  the  en- 
closure of  the  Carr;"  or  Professor  Aytoun's 

"But  it  were  vain  for  you  and  / 
In  single  light  our  strength  to  try." 

A  writer  in  "Blackwood"  affirms  that,  "  with  the  excep- 
tion of  Wordsworth,  there  is  not  one  celebrated  author  of 
this  day  who  has  written  two  pages  consecutively  without 
some  flagrant  impropriety  in  the  grammar;"  and  the 
statement,  we  believe,  is  undercharged.  The  usage,  there- 
fore, of  a  good  writer  is  only  prhiid  facie  evidence  of  the 
correctness  of  a  disputed  word  or  phrase;  for  he  may  have 
used  the  word  carelessly  or  inadvertently,  and  it  is  alto- 
gether jjrobable  that,  were  his  attention  called  to  it,  he 
would  be  prompt  to  admit  his  error.  It  has  been  re- 
marked that  "nowadays"  and  "had  have"  meet  all  the 
conditions  of  good  usage,  being  reputable,  national,  and 
present;  but  one  is  a  solecism,  the  other  a  barbarism. 
Again,  if  the  writer  is  an  old  writer,  like  Shakespeare, 
Milton,  Dryden,  or  Addison,  his  authority  must  always  bf 
received  with  caution,  and  with  increasing  caution  as  we 
recede  from  the  age  in  which  he  flourished.  The  great 
changes  which  our  language  has  undergone  within  even 
a  hundred  years,  show  that  the  writers  of  the  sixteenth 
and  seventeenth  centuries  are  unsafe  guides  for  the  nine- 
teenth,   unless    they    are    corroborated    b}'    contemporai-y 


430  AVOKDS;    TlIEIJt    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

usage.  Let  the  English  language  be  enriched  in  the 
spirit,  and  according  to  the  principles  of  which  we  li;ive 
spoken,  and  it  will  be,  not  a  tank,  but  a  living  stream. 
casting  out  everything  effete  and  impure,  refreshed  by  new 
sources  of  inspiration  and  wealth,  keeping  pace  with  the 
stately  march  of  the  ages,  and  still  retaining  much  of  its 
original  sweetness,  expression  and  force. 

It  is  our  intention  in  this  chapter,  not  to  notice  all  the 
improprieties  of  speech  that  merit  censure, —  to  do  which 
would  I'equire  volumes, — but  to  criticise  some  of  those 
which  most  frequently  oflFend  the  ear  of  the  scholar  in  this 
country.  The  term  impropriety  we  shall  use,  not  merely 
in  the  strictly  rhetorical  sense  of  the  word,  but  in  the 
popular  meaning,  to  include  in  it  all  inaccui'acies  of  speech, 
whether  ofiences  against  etymology,  lexicography,  or  syn- 
tax. To  pillory  such  oflFences,  to  point  out  the  damage 
which  they  inflict  upon  our  language,  and  to  expose  the 
moral  obliquity  which  often  lurks  beneath  them,  is,  we 
believe,  the  duty  of  every  scholar  who  knows  how  closely 
purity  of  speech,  like  personal  cleanliness,  is  allied  to 
purity  of  thought  and  rectitude  of  action.  To  say  that 
every  person  who  aspires  to  be  esteemed  a  gentleman 
should  carefully  shun  all  barbarisms,  solecisms,  and  other 
faults  in  his  speech,  is  to  utter  the  merest  truism.  The 
man  who  habitually  deviates  from  the  custom  of  his 
country  in  expressing  his  thoughts,  is  hardly  less  ridicu- 
lous than  one  who  walks  the  streets  in  a  Spanish  cloak 
or  a  Roman  toga.  An  accurate  knowledge  and  a  correct 
and  felicitous  use  of  words  are,  of  themselves,  almost  sure 
proofs  of  good  breeding.  No  doubt  it  marks  a  weak  mind 
to  care  more  for  the  casket  than  for  the  jewel  it  contains, 
—  to  prefer   elegantly   turned    sentences   to   sound   sense; 


COAIMOX    IMPROPRIETIES   OF   SPEECH.  437 

but  sound  sense  always  acquires  additional  value  wlieu 
expressed  in  pure  English.  Moreover,  be  wbo  carefully 
studies  accuracy  of  expression,  the  proper  clioice  and 
arrangement  of  words  in  any  language,  will  be  also 
advancing  toward  accuracy  of  thought,  as  well  as  toward 
propriety  and  energy  of  speech;  "for  divers  philosophers 
hold,"  says  Shakespeare,  "  that  the  lip  is  parcel  of  the 
mind."  Few  things  are  more  ludicrous  than  the  blunders 
by  which  even  persons  moving  in  refined  society  often 
betray  the  grossest  ignorance  of  very  common  words.  A 
story  is  told  in  England  of  an  over-classical  Member  of 
Parliament,  who,  not  knowing  or  forgetting  that  "omni- 
bus" is  the  plural  of  the  Latin  "o»<h«s,"  and  means  '"for 
all," — that  is,  a  vehicle  in  which  people  of  all  ranks  may 
sit  together, —  spoke  of  "two  omnibi."  There  are  hun- 
dreds of  educated  persons  who  speak  of  the  "banister"  of 
a  staircase,  when  they  mean  "balustrade,"  or  "baluster"; 
there  is  no  such  word  as  "  banister."  There  are  hundreds 
of  others  who  never  eat  anything,  not  even  an  apple,  but 
always  partake^  even  though  they  consume  all  the  food 
before  them;  and  even  the  London  "Times,"  in  one  of  its 
issues,  spoke  of  a  jury  "  immersing  '"  a  defendant  in  dam- 
ages. We  once  knew  an  old  lady  in  a  New  England  village, 
quite  aristocratic  in  her  feelings  and  habits,  who  com- 
plained to  her  physician  that  "her  blood  seemed  to  have  all 
stackpoled ;'"  and  we  have  heard  of  another  descendant  of 
Mrs.  Malaprop,  who,  in  answer  to  the  question  whether  she 
would  be  sure  to  keep  an  appointment,  replied,  "  I  will 
come, — aUudhig  it  does  not  rain." 

Goldsmith  is  one  of  the  most  charming  writers  in  our 
language;  yet  in  his  "History  of  England,"  the  following 
statement  occurs  in  a  chapter  on  the  reign  of  Elizabeth. 


438  words;   tiieiu  use  axd  ap.use. 

Speaking  of  a  communication  to  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  he 
says:  "This  they  effected  by  conveying  their  letters  to  her 
l)y  means  of  a  brewer,  that  supplied  the  fainiltj  with  ale 
tJiroi((/h  a  chink  in  the  wall  of  her  apartment.'''  A  queer 
brewer  that,  to  supply  his  ale  through  a  chink  in  the  wall! 
Again,  we  read  in  Goldsmith's  "  History  of  Greece":  "  He 
wrote  to  that  distinguished  philosopher  in  terms  polite  and 
flattering,  begging  of  him  to  come  and  undertake  hi.i  edu- 
cation, and  bestow  on  him  those  useful  lessons  of  mag- 
nanimity and  virtue  which  every  great  man  ought  to 
possess,  and  which  Jiis  numerous  avocations  rendered  im- 
possible for  /(/»(."  In  this  sentence  the  pronoun  he  is 
employed  six  times,  under  different  forms;  and  as,  in  each 
case,  it  may  refer  to  either  of  two  antecedents,  the  mean- 
ing, but  for  our  knowledge  of  the  facts,  would  be  involved 
in  hopeless  confusion.  First,  the  pronoun  stands  for  Philip, 
then  for  Aristotle,  then  for  Alexander,  again  for  Alexander, 
and  then  twice  for  Philip.  A  still  greater  offender  against 
clearness  in  the  use  of  pronouns  is  Lord  Clarendon;  e.g., 
"On  which,  with  the  king's  and  queen's  so  ample  promises 
to  him  (the  Treasurer)  so  few  hours  before,  conferring  the 
place  upon  another,  and  the  Duke  of  York's  manner  of 
receiving  him  (the  Treasurer),  after  he  (the  Chancellor)  had 
been  shut  ui^  with  him  (the  Duke),  as  he  (the  Treasurer) 
was  informed  might  very  well  excuse  him  (the  Treasurer) 
from  thinking  he  (the  Chancellor)  had  some  share  in  the 
effront  he  (the  Treasurer)  had  iindergone."  It  would  be 
hard  to  match  this  passage  even  in  the  writings  of  the 
humblest  penny-a-liner;  it  is  "confusion  worse  con- 
founded." 

Solecisms  so   glaring  as  these  may  not  often    disfigure 
men's  writing  or  speech;   and  some  of  the  faults  we  shall 


COMMOX    IMPROPRIETIES    OF   SPEECH.  439 

notice  nia}'  seem  so  petty  and  microscopic  that  the  i-eader 
may  deem  us  "  word-catchers  that  live  on  syllables."  But 
it  is  the  little  foxes  that  spoil  the  grapes,  in  the  familiar 
speech  of  the  people  as  well  as  in  Solomon's  vineyards; 
and,  as  a  garment  may  be  honey-combed  by  moths,  so  the 
fine  texture  of  a  language  may  be  gradually  destroyed,  and 
its  strength  impaired,  by  numerous  and  apparently  insig- 
nificant solecisms  and  inaccuracies.  Nicety  in  the  use  of 
particles  is  one  of  the  most  decisive  marks  of  skill  and 
scholarship  in  a  writer;  and  the  accuracy,  beauty,  and 
force  of  many  a  fine  passage  in  English  literature  depend 
largely  on  the  use  of  the  pronouns,  prepositions,  and  arti- 
cles. How  emphatic  and  touching  does  the  following 
enumeration  become  through  the  repetition  of  one  petty 
word!  "i?//  thine  agony  and  bloody  sweat;  by  thy  cross 
and  passion ;  bi/  thy  precious  death  and  burial ;  by  thy  glo- 
rious resun-ection  and  ascension;  and  by  the  coming  of 
the  Holy  Ghost."  How  much  pathos  is  added  to  the  prayer 
of  the  publican  by  the  proper  translation  of  the  Greek 
article, —  "  God  be  merciful  to  me  the  sinner!  " 

De  Quincey  strikingly  observes:  ''  I'eople  that  have 
practised  composition  as  much,  and  with  as  vigilant  an 
eye  as  myself,  know  also,  by  thousands  of  cases,  how  infi- 
nite is  the  disturbance  caused  in  the  logic  of  a  thought 
by  the  mere  position  of  a  word  as  despicable  as  the  word 
even.  A  mote  that  is  in  itself  invisible,  shall  darken  the 
august  faculty  of  sight  in  a  human  eye, —  the  heavens 
shall  be  hid  by  a  wretched  atom  tliat  dai-es  not  show  itself, 
—  and  the  station  of  a  syllable  sliall  cloud  tlie  judgment 
of  a  council.  Nay,  even  an  ambiguous  emphasis  falling 
to  the  right-hand  word,  or  the  left-hand  word,  shall 
confound  a  system."     It  is  a  fact  well  known  to  lawyers, 


440  WORDS;     THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE, 

that  the  omission  or  misplacement  of  a  monosyllable  in  a 
legal  document  has  rendered  many  a  man  bankrupt.  Fif- 
teen years  ago  an  expensive  lawsuit  arose  in  England,  on 
the  meaning  of  two  phrases  in  the  will  of  a  deceased 
nobleman.  In  the  one  he  gives  his  property  "  to  my 
brother  and  to  his  children  in  succession";  in  the  other, 
"  to  my  brother  and  his  children  in  succession."  This 
diversity  gives  rise  to  quite  different  interpretations.  In 
another  case,  by  omitting  the  letter  .s  in  a  legal  document, 
an  English  attorney  is  said  to  have  inflicted  on  a  client  a 
loss  of  £30,000. 

In  language,  as  in  the  fine  arts,  thei'e  is  but  one  way 
to  attain  to  excellence,  and  that  is  by  stud}'  of  the  most 
faultless  models.  As  the  air  and  manner  of  a  gentleman 
can  be  acquired  only  by  living  constantly  in  good  society, 
so  grace  and  purity  of  expression  must  be  attained  by  a 
familiar  acquaintance  with  the  standard  authors.  It  is 
astonishing  how  rapidly  we  may  by  this  practice  enrich 
our  vocabularies,  and  how  speedily  we  imitate  and  un- 
consciously reproduce  in  our  language  the  niceties  and 
delicacies  of  expression  w^hich  have  charmed  us  in  a  favor- 
ite author.  Like  the  sheriflF  whom  Rufus  Choate  satirized 
for  having  "  overworked  the  participle,"  most  persons 
make  one  word  act  two,  ten  or  a  dozen  parts;  yet  there 
is  hardly  any  man  who  may  not,  by  moderate  painstaking, 
learn  to  express  himself  in  terms  as  precise,  if  not  as 
vivid,  as  those  of  Pitt,  whom  Fox  so  praised  for  his  accu- 
racy.* The  account  which  Lord  Chesterfield  gives  of  the 
method  by  which  he  became  one  of  the  most  elegant  and 
polished  talkers  and  orators  of  Europe,  strikingly  shows 
what    miracles    may    be    achieved    b}*    care    and    practice. 

♦  See  page  2G. 


COMMON'    IMPKOPRIETIES    OF    SPEECH.  441 

Early  in  life  he  determined  not  to  speak  one  word  in  con 
versation  which  was  not  the  fittest  he  could  recall;  and  he 
charged  his  son  never  to  deliver  the  commonest  order  to  a 
servant,  but  in  the  best  language  he  could  find,  and  with 
the  best  utterance.  For  years  Chesterfield  wrote  down 
every  brilliant  passage  he  met  with  in  his  reading,  and 
translated  it  into  French,  or,  if  it  was  in  a  foreign  lan- 
guage, into  English.  By  this  practice  a  certain  elegance 
became  habitual  to  him,  and  it  would  have  given  him  more 
trouble,  he  says,  to  express  himself  inelegantly  than  he 
had  ever  taken  to  avoid  the  defect.  Lord  Bolingbroke, 
who  had  an  imperial  dominion  over  all  the  resources  of 
expression,  and  could  talk  all  day  just  as  perfectly  as  he 
wrote,  told  Chesterfield  that  he  owed  the  power  to  the 
same  cause, —  an  early  and  habitual  attention  to  his  style. 
When  Boswell  expressed  to  Johnson  his  surprise  at  the 
constant  force  and  propriety  of  the  Doctor's  words,  the 
latter  replied  that  he  had  long  been  accustomed  to  clothe 
his  thoughts  in  the  fittest  words  he  could  command,  and 
thus  a  vivid  and  exact  phraseology  had  become  habitual. 

It  has  been  affirmed  by  a  high  authority  that  a  knowl- 
edge of  English  grammar  is  rather  a  matter  of  conven- 
ience as  a  nomenclature, —  a  medium  of  thought  and  dis- 
cussion about  the  language, —  than  a  guide  to  the  actual 
use  of  it;  and  that  it  is  as  impossible  to  acquire  the 
complete  command  of  our  own  tongue  by  the  study  of 
grammatical  precept,  as  to  learn  to  walk  or  swim  by 
attending  a  course  of  lectures  on  anatomy.  "  Undoubt- 
edly I  have  found,"  says  Sir  Philip  Sydney,  "in  divers  smal 
learned  courtiers  a  more  sound  stile  than  in  some  pos- 
sessors of  learning;  of  which  I  can  ghesse  no  other  cause, 
but    that   the  courtier    following    that   which   by   practice 


442  AvojtDs;   tiieiu  usi:  and  aul'se. 

he  findeth  fittest  to  nature,  therein  (though  he  know  it 
not)  doth  accord iiKj  to  art,  thougli  not  hij  art;  where  the 
other,  using  art  to  shew  art,  and  not  to  hide  art  (as  in 
these  cases  he  should  doe),  flieth  from  nature,  and  indeed 
abuseth  art." 

Let  it  not  be  inferred,  however,  from  all  this  that 
grammatical  knowledge  is  unnecessary.  A  man  of  refined 
taste  may  detect  many  errors  by  the  ear;  but  there  are 
other  errors,  equally  gross,  that  have  not  a  harsh  sound, 
and  consequently  cannot  be  detected  without  a  knowledge 
of  the  rules  that  are  violated.  Besides,  it  often  hajjpens, 
as  we  have  already  seen,  that  even  the  purest  writers 
inadvertently  allow  some  inaccuracies  to  creep  into  their 
productions.  The  works  of  Addison,  Swift,  Bentley,  Pope, 
Young,  Blair,  Hume,  Gibbon,  and  even  Johnson,  that  levi- 
athan of  litei'ature,  are  disfigured  by  numberless  instances 
of  slovenliness  of  style.  Cobbett,  in  his  "Grammar  of  the 
English  Language,"  says  that  he  noted  down  about  two 
hundred  improprieties  of  language  in  Johnson's  "Lives  of 
the  Poets"  alone;  and  he  points  out  as  many  more,  at 
least,  in  the  "  Rambler,"  which  the  author  says  he  revised 
and  corrected  with  extraordinary  care.  Sydney  Smith,  one 
of  the  finest  stylists  of  this  century,  has  not  a  few  flagrant 
solecisms;  and,  strange  to  say,  some  of  them  occur  in  a 
passage  in  which  he  is  trying  to  show  that  the  English 
language  "may  be  learned,  practically  and  unerrhKjhi.'''' 
without  a  knowledge  of  grammatical  rules.  "  When,"  he 
asks,  "do  we  ever  find  a  well  educated  Englishman  or 
Frenchman  embarrassed  by  an  ignoi-ance  of  the  grammar 
of  their  respective  languages?  Theij  first  learn  it  prac- 
tically and  unerringly;  and  then,  if  they  chose  (choose?) 
to  look   back  and   smile  at   the   idea  of   having   proceeded 


COMMON    IMPROPRIETIES    OF    SPEECH.  443 

by  a  number  of  rules,  without  knowing  one  of  them  by 
heart,  or  being  conscious  that  they  had  any  rule  at  all, 
this  is  a  philosophical  amusement;  but  who  ever  tliiiiks 
of  learning  the  grammar  of  their  own  tongue,  before  theij 
are  very  good  grammarians!"  The  best  refutation  of  the 
reasoning  in  this  passage  is  found  in  the  bad  grammar 
of  the  passage  itself. 

Even  the  literary  detectives,  who  spend  their  time  in 
hunting  down  and  showing  up  the  mistakes  of  others, 
enjoy  no  immunity  from  error.  Harrison,  in  his  excellent 
work  on  "  The  English  Language,"  written  expressly  to 
point  out  some  of  the  most  prevalent  solecisms  in  its 
literature,  has  such  solecisms  as  the  following:  "The 
authoritij  of  Addison,  in  matters  of  grammar;  of  Bentley, 
who  never  made  the  English  grammar  his  study;  of 
Bolingbroke,  Pope,  and  others,  are  as  nothing."  Breen, 
who  in  his  "Modern  English  Literature:  its  Blemishes  and 
Defects,"  has  shown  uncommon  critical  acumen,  writes 
thus:  "There  is  )io  writer  so  addicted  to  this  blunder  as 
Isaac  DTsraeli."  Again,  in  criticising  a  faulty  expression 
of  Alison,  he  sins  almost  as  grievously  himself  by  saying: 
"It  would  have  been  correct  to  say:  'Suchet's  administra- 
tion was  incomparably  less  oppressive  than  that  of  anij  of 
the  French  generals  in  the  Peninsula.' "  This  reminds 
one  of  the  statement  that  "Noah  and  his  family  outlived 
all  who  lived  before  the  flood," — that  is,  they  outlived 
tlifMii.sL'lves.  Latham,  in  his  profound  treatise  on  "Tlio 
Enj^lish  Language,"  has  such  sentences  as  this:  " 'I'lio 
logical  and  historical  n)i((Ii/sis  of  a  language  generally  in 
some  degree  coincides."  Hero  the  syntax  is  correct;  hut. 
the  sense  is  sacrificed,  since  a  coincidence  implies  at  least 
two    things.     In    the    London   "Saturday    Review,"   which 


444  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

"is  notliing  if  not  critical,'"  we  find  such  a  cacoplionous 
sentence  as  the  following:  "In  personal  relations  Mr, 
Bright  is  probabZy  general///  kind///."  Blair's  "  Rhetoric" 
has  been  used  as  a  text-book  for  half  a  century;  yet  it 
swarms  with  errors  of  grammar  and  rhetoric,  against 
almost  every  law  of  which  he  has  sinned.  Moon,  in  his 
review  of  Alford,  has  pointed  out  hundreds  of  faults  in 
"The  Dean's  English,"  as  censurable  as  any  which  he  has 
censured;  and  newspaper  critics,  at  home  and  abroad, 
have  pointed  out  scores  of  obscurations,  as  well  as  of 
glaring  faults,  in  Moon. 

It  has  been  well  observed  by  Professor  Marsh  that  most 
men  would  be  unable  to  produce  a  good  caricature  of 
their  own  individual  speech,  and  that  the  shibboleth  of 
our  personal  dialect  is  unknown  to  ourselves,  however 
ready  we  may  be  to  remark  the  characteristic  phraseology 
of  others.  "  It  is  a  mark  of  weakness,  of  poverty  of  speech, 
or,  at  least,  of  bad  taste,  to  continue  the  use  of  pet  words, 
or  other  peculiarities  of  language,  after  we  have  once 
become  conscious  of  them  as  such."  There  are  certain 
stock  phrases,  also,  Avhich,  though  not  objectionable  in 
themselves,  have  been  so  worn  to  shreds  by  continual 
repetition  in  speech  and  in  the  press,  that  a  man  of 
taste  will  shun  using  them  as  instinctively  as  he  shuns  a 
solecism.  A  few  examples  are  the  following:  "History 
repeats  itself,"  "The  irony  of  fate,"'  "That  goes  without 
saying,"  "Ample  scope  and  verge  enough,"  "  We  are  free 
to  confess,"  "Conspicuous  by  its  absence,"  "The  courage 
of  his  convictions." 

We  proceed  to  notice  some  of  the  common  improprieties 
of  speech.     Many  of  them  are  of  recent  origin,  others  are 


COMMON    IMPROPRIETIES   OF   SPEECH.  445 

old  offenders  that  have  been  tried  and  condemned  at  tlie 
bar  of  criticism  again  and  again: — 

But,  for  that,  or  if.  Example:  "I  have  no  doubt  but 
he  will  come  to-night."'  "I  should  not  wonder  but  that 
was  the  case." 

Af/ricitlttiralisf,  for  agriculturist,  is  an  improprietv  of 
the  grossest  sort.  Nine-tenths  of  our  writers  on  agricul- 
ture use  the  former  expression.  They  might  as  well  say 
geologicalist,  instead  of  geologist,  or  chemicalist,  instead 
of  chemist. 

Deduction,  for  induction,  hulurfion  is  the  mental  pro- 
cess by  which  we  ascend  to  the  discovery  of  general  truths. 
deduction  is  the  process  by  which  the  law  governing  par- 
ticulars is  derived  from  a  knowledge  of  the  law  governing 
the  class  to  which  particulars  belong. 

Ilbj  is  a  gross  barbarism,  quite  common  in  these  days, 
especially  with  newly  fledged  poets.  There  is  no  such  word 
as  illy  in  the  language.  The  noun,  adjective,  and  adverb, 
are  ill. 

Pleniij,  for  plentiful.  Stump  politicians  tell  us  that  the 
adoption  of  a  certain  measure  "  will  make  money  plenty  in 
every  man's  pocket." 

/  have  got,  for  I  have.  Hardly  any  other  word  in  the 
language  is  so  abused  as  the  word  get.  A  man  says,  "  I 
have  got  a  cold";  he  means  simply,  "I  have  a  cold." 
Another  says  that  a  certain  lady  "  has  got  a  fine  head  of 
hair,"  which  may  be  true  if  the  hair  is  false,  but  it  is  prob- 
ably intended  as  a  compliment.  A  third  says:  "  I  have  got 
to  leave  the  city  for  New  York  this  evening,"  meaning  only 
that  he  has  to  leave  the  city,  etc.  Nine  out  of  ten  ladies 
who  enter  a  diy-gnods  sloro,  a-k.  ""  Have  you  got"  suoh  or 
such  an  article?    It"  such  a  plirase  as  "  I  have  possess  "'  were 


440  WOKDS;    THEIR    USE    AND    ABUSE. 

used,  all  noses  would  turn  up  together;  but  "  I  have  got," 
when  used  to  signify  "  I  have,"  is  ecjually  a  departure  from 
propriety.  A  man  may  say,  "  I  have  got  more  than  my 
neighbor  has,  because  I  have  been  more  industrious";  but 
he  cannot  with  propriety  say,  "  I  have  got  a  long  nose," 
however  long  his  nose  may  be,  unless  it  be  an  artificial  one. 
Even  so  able  a  writer  as  Prof.  Whitney  expresses  himself 
thus:  "  Who  ever  yet  got  through  learning  his  mother 
tongue,  and  could  say,  '  The  work  is  done  '?  " 

Recomvicnd.  This  word  is  used  in  a  strange  sense  by 
many  persons.  Political  conventions  often  pass  resolutions 
beginning  thus:  "Resolved,  that  the  Republicans  (or  Dem- 
ocrats) of  this  county  be  recommended  to  meet,"  etc. 

Differ  with  is  often  used,  in  public  debate,  instead  of 
differ  from.  Example:  "I  differ  with  the  learned  gentle- 
man, entirely," — which  is  intended  to  mean,  that  the 
speaker  holds  views  different  from  those  of  the  gentleman; 
not  that  he  agrees  with  the  gentleman  in  differing  from 
the  views  of  a  third  person.  Different  to  is  often  spoken 
and  written  in  England,  and  occasionally  in  this  country, 
instead  of  different  from.  An  example  of  this  occurs  in 
Queen  Victoria's  book,  edited  by  Mr.  Helps. 

Corporeal,  for  corporal,  is  a  gross  vulgarism,  the  use  of 
which  at  this  day  should  almost  subject  an  educated  man  to 
the  kind  of  punishment  which  the  latter  adjective  desig- 
nates. Corporeal  means,  having  a  body  corporal,  or  belong- 
ing to  a  body. 

Wearies,  for  is  wearied.  Example:  "The  reader  soon 
wearies  of  such  stuff." 

Anij  how  is  an  exceedingly  vulgar  phrase,  though  used 
even  l)v  so  elegant  a  writer  as  Blair.  Example:  "If  the 
damage  can  be  any  how  repaired,"  etc.      The  use  of  this 


COMMON   IMPK0PRIETIE3   OF   SPEECH.  447 

expression,  in  any  marmer,  by  one  wlio  professes  to  write 
and  speak  the  English  tongue  with  purity,  is  unpardonable. 

It  ivere,  for  it  is.  Example:  "It  were  a  consummation 
devoutly  to  be  wi.shed  for."  Dr.  Chalmers  says:  "  It  were 
an  intolerable  spectacle,  even  to  the  inmates  of  a  felon's 
cell,  did  they  behold  one  of  their  fellows  in  the  agonies  of 
death."     For  were  put  would  be,  and  for  did  put  should. 

Doubt  is  a  word  much  abused  by  a  class  of  would-be 
laconic  speakers,  who  affect  an  Abernethy-like  brevity  of 
language.  "  I  doubt  such  is  the  true  meaning  of  the  Con- 
stitution," say  our  '"great  expounders,"  looking  wondrous 
wise.     They  mean,  "  I  doubt  whether,"  etc. 

Lie,  lay.  Gross  blunders  are  committed  in  the  use  of 
these  words;  e.g.,  "He  laid  down  on  the  grass,"  instead  of 
"he  laid  himself  down,"  or,  "he  lay  down."  The  verb  to 
lie  (to  be  in  a  horizontal  position)  is  lay  in  the  preterite. 
The  book  does  not  lay  on  the  table;  it  lies  there.  Some 
years  ago  an  old  lady  consulted  an  eccentric  Boston  physi- 
cian, and,  in  describing  her  disease,  said:  "The  trouble, 
Doctor,  is  that  I  can  neither  lay  nor  set."  "  Then,  Madam," 
was  the  reply,  "I  would  respectfully  suggest  the  propriety 
of  roosting." 

"  Like  I  did''  is  a  gross  western  and  southern  vul- 
garism for  "as  I  did."  "You  will  feel  like  lightning  ought 
to  strike  you,"  said  a  learned  Doctor  of  Divinity  at  a  meet- 
ing in  the  East.  Even  so  well  informed  a  writer  as  R.  W. 
Dale,  D.D.,  says:  "A  man's  style,  if  it  is  a  good  one,  fits 
his  thought  like  a  good  coat  fits  his  figure."  Like  is  a 
jireposition,  and  should  not  be  used  as  a  conjunction. 

Less,  for  fewer.  "Not  less  than  fifty  persons."  Less 
rt-lates  to  (piaulity;  fcurr,  to  number. 


448  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

Balance,  for  remainder.  "  I'll  take  the  balance  of  the 
goods." 

Revolt,  for  are  revolting  to.     "  Such  doctrines  revolt  us." 

Alone,  for  only.  Quackenboss,  in  his  "  Course  of  Com- 
position and  Rhetoric,"  says,  in  violation  of  one  of  his  own 
rules:  "This  means  of  communication,  as  well  as  that 
which  follows,  is  employed  by  man  alone."  Onhj  is  often 
misplaced  in  a  sentence.  Miss  Braddon  says,  in  the  pros- 
pectus of  '■  Belgravia,"  her  English  magazine,  that  "  it  will 
be  written  in  good  English.  In  its  pages  papers  of  sterling 
merit  will  only  appear."  A  poor  beginning  this!  She 
means  that  "only  papers  of  sterling  merit  will  appear." 
Bolingbroke  says:  "  Believe  me,  the  providence  of  God  has 
established  such  an  order  in  the  world,  that,  of  all  that 
belongs  to  us,  the  least  valuable  parts  can  alone  fall  under 
the  will  of  others."  The  last  clause  should  be,  "  only  the 
least  valuable  parts  can  fall  under  the  will  of  others." 
The  word  merely  is  misplaced  in  the  following  sentence 
from  a  collegiate  address  on  eloquence:  "It  is  true  of  men 
as  of  God,  that  words  merely  meet  no  response, —  only  such 
as  are  loaded  with  thought." 

Likewise,  for  also.  Also  classes  together  things  or 
qualities,  whilst  likewise  couples  actions  or  states  of  being. 
*'  He  did  it  likewise,"  means  he  did  it  in  like  manner.  An 
English  Quaker  was  once  asked  by  a  lawyer  whether  he 
could  tell  the  difference  betw^een  also  and  likewise.  "  0, 
yes,"  was  the  reply,  "Erskine  is  a  great  law3'er;  his  talents 
are  universally  admired.  You  are  a  lawyer  also,  but  not 
like-wise.'' 

Avocation,  for  vocation,  or  calling.  A  man's  avocations 
are  those  pursuits  or  amusements  which  engage  his  atten- 


COMMON    IMrROPRIETIES    OF    SPEECH.  440 

tion  when  he  is  "called  awa}- from  "  his  regular  business 
or  profession, — as  music,  fishing,  boating. 

Crushed  out,  for  crushed.  "The  rebellion  has  been 
crushed  out."  Why  out,  rather  than  in?  If  you  tread 
on  a  worm,  you  simply  crush  him, — that  is  all.  It  ought 
to  satisfy  the  most  vengeful  foe  of  "the  rebels"  that  they 
have  been  crushed,  without  adding  the  needless  cruelty  of 
crushing  them  out,  which  is  to  be  as  vindictive  as  Alexander, 
of  whom  Dryden  tells  us  that 

"Thrice  he  routed  all  his  foes, 
And  thrice  he  slew  the  slain." 

Of,  for  from.  Example:  "Received  of  John  Smith  fifty 
dollars."     Usage,  perhaps,  sanctions  this. 

At  all  is  a  needless  expletive,  which  is  employed  by 
many  writers  of  what  may  be  called  the  forcible- feeble 
school.  For  example:  "The  coach  was  upset,  but,  strange 
to  say,  not  a  passenger  received  the  slightest  injury  at  all." 
"  It  is  not  at  all  strange." 

But  that,  for  that.  This  error  is  quite  common  among 
those  who  think  themselves  above  learning  anything  more 
from  the  dictionary  and  grammar.  Trench  says:  "He 
never  doubts  but  that  he  knows  their  intention.''  A  worse 
erroi"  is  but  what,  as  in  the  reply  of  Mr.  Jobling,  of  "'  Bleak 
House":  "Thank  you,  Guppy,  I  don't  know  but  what  I  will 
take  a  marrow  pudding."  "He  would  not  believe  but  what 
I  was  joking." 

Convene  is  used  l)y  many  persons  in  a  strange  sense, 
"This  road  will  convene  the  public." 

PJriiJrnre  is  a  word  much  abused  by  learned  judges  and 
attorneys, —  being  continually  used  for  festiinimif.  Evi- 
dence relates  to  the  convictive  view  of  any  one's  mind; 
testimonij,   to    the   knowledge  of  another  concerning  some 


450  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

fact.     The  evidence   in  a  case  is  often  the  reverse  of  the 
testimony. 

Had  harp.  E.rj.  The  Tjonrlon  "Tii7ies"  says  "Sir 
Wilfred  Lawson  had  better  hare  kept  to  his  original  pro- 
posal." This  is  a  very  low  vulgarism,  notwithstanding  it 
has  the  authority  of  Addison.  It  is  quite  common  to  say 
"Had  I  have  seen  him,"  "Had  you  have  known  it,"  etc. 
We  can  say,  "  I  have  been,"  "  I  had  been,"  but  what  sort 
of  a  tense  is  had  have  been? 

Had  ought,  had  better,  had  rather.  All  these  expressions 
are  absurdities,  no  less  gross  than  hisn,  tother,  haint,  theirn. 
No  doubt  there  is  plenty  of  good  authority  for  had  better 
and  had  rather  ;  but  how  can  future  action  be  expressed  by 
a  verb  that  signifies  past  and  completed  possession? 

At,  for  by.  E.  g.,  "  Sales  at  auction."  The  word  auc- 
tion signifies  a  manner  of  sale;  and  this  signification  seems 
to  require  the  preposition  by. 

The  above,  as  an  adjective.  "  The  above  extract  is  suffi- 
cient to  verify  my  assertion."  "  I  fully  concur  in  the  above 
statement "  (the  statement  above,  or  the  foregoing  state- 
ment). Charles  Lamb  speaks  of  "  the  above  boys  and  the 
below  boys." 

Then,  as  an  adjective.  "  The  then  King  of  Holland." 
This  error,  to  which  even  educated  men  are  addicted, 
springs  from  a  desire  of  brevity;  but  verbal  economy  is 
not  commendable  when  it  violates  the  plainest  rules  of 
language. 

Final  couipJetion.  As  every  completion  is  final,  the 
adjective  is  superfluous.  A  similar  objection  applies  to 
Jirst  beginning.  Similar  to  these  superabundant  forms  of 
expression  is  another,  in  which  i< )ii re rsal  amd  all  are  brought 
into  the  same  construction.     A  man  is  said  to  be  "  univer- 


COMMON    ni PROPRIETIES    OF    SPEECH.  451 

sally  esteemed  by  all  who  know  him."  If  all  esteem  him, 
he  is,  of  course,  nniversaUtj  esteemed;  and  the  converse  is 
equally  true. 

Parfij,  for  man  or  woman.  This  error,  so  common  in 
England,  is  becoming  more  and  more  prevalent  here.  An 
English  witness  once  testified  that  he  saw  "  a  short  party  " 
(meaning  person)  "go  over  the  bridge."  Another  Eng- 
lishman, who  had  looked  at  a  portrait  of  8t.  Paul  in  a 
gallery  at  Florence,  being  asked  his  opinion  of  the  picture, 
said  that  he  thought  "  the  party  was  very  well  executed." 
It  is  hardly  necessary-  to  say  that  it  takes  several  persons  to 
make  a  party. 

Celebrity  is  sometimes  applied  to  celebrated  persons, 
instead  of  being  used  abstractly;  e.g.,  "Several  celebrities 
ai*e  at  the  Palmer  House." 

Equaniinity  of  mind.  As  equanimity  {(vquus  animus) 
means  evenness  of  mind,  why  should  "  of  mind  "  be  re- 
peated? "  Anxiety  of  mind"  is  less  objectionable,  but  the 
first  word  is  sufficient. 

DonH  for  doesn't,  or  does  not.  Even  so  scholarly  a 
divine  as  the  Rev.  Dr.  Bellows,  of  New  York,  ^employs 
this  vnlgarism  four  times  in  an  article  in  the  "  Inde- 
pendent." "  A  man,"  he  says,  "  who  knows  only  his  fam- 
ily and  neighbors,  don't  know  them;  a  man  wlio  only 
knows  the  present  don't  know  that.  .  .  .  Many  a  man, 
with  a  talent  for  making  money,  don't  know  whether  he 
is  rich  or  poor,  because  he  don't  understand  bookkeeping," 
etc. 

Predicate,  for  found.  E.y  ,  "  His  argument  was  pred- 
icated on  the  assumption,"  etc. 

Try,  for  make.     E.g.,  "  Try  the  experiment." 

Superior,  for  able,  virtuous,  etc.     E.g.,  "  He  is  a  supe- 


452  words;  their  usk  axd  abuse. 

rior  man."  Not  less  vulgar  is  the  expression,  "an  inferior 
man,"  for  a  man  of  small  abilities. 

Deceicing,  for  trying  to  deceive.  E.(/.,  a  person  says 
to  another,  "  You  are  deceiving  me,"  when  he  means 
exactly  the  opposite,  namely,  "  You  are  trying  to  deceive 
me,  but  you  cannot  succeed,  for  your  trickery  is  trans- 
parent." 

The  masses,  for  the  people  generally.  "The  masses 
must  be  educated."     The  masses  of  what? 

In  our  midst.  This  vulgarism  is  continually  heard  in 
prayer-meetings,  and  from  the  lips  of  Doctors  of  Divinity, 
though  its  incorrectness  has  been  exposed  again  and  again. 
The  second  chapter  in  Prof.  Scheie  De  Vere's  excellent 
"Studies  in  English"  begins  thus:  "When  a  man  rises 
to  eminence  in  our  midst,"  etc., —  which  is  doubtless  one 
of  the  few  errors  in  his  book  qnas  incurla  fudit.  The 
possessive  pronoun  can  properly  be  used  only  to  indicate 
possession  or  appurtenance.  "The  midst"  of  a  company 
or  society  is  not  a  thing  belonging  or  appurtenant  to  the 
company,  or  to  the  individuals  composing  it.  It  is  a  mere 
term  of  relation  of  an  adverbial,  not  of  a  substantive 
character,  and  is  an  intensified  form  of  expression  for 
among.     Would  any  one  say,  "In  our  middle"? 

Excessively,  for  exceedingly.  Ladies  often  complain 
that  the  weather  is  "excessively  hot,"  thereby  implying 
that  they  do  not  object  to  the  heat,  but  only  to  the  excess 
of  heat.     They  mean  simply  that  the  weather  is  venj  hot. 

Either  is  applicable  only  to  two  objects;  and  the  same 
remark  is  true  of  neither  and  both.  "Either  of  the 
three"  is  wrong;  so  is  this, —  "Ten  bui-glars  broke  into 
the  house,  but  neither  of  them  could  be  recognized."  Say, 
"  none  of  them,"  or  "  not  one  of  them  could  be  recognized." 


COMMON    IMPROPRIETIES    OF    SPEECH.  -i')'.] 

Either  i.s  sometimes  improperly  used  for  each;  e.y.,  "On 
either  side  of  the  river  was  the  tree  of  life," — Rev.  xxi,  2. 
Here  it  is  not  meant  that  if  you  do  not  find  that  the 
tree  of  life  was  on  tliis  side,  it  was  on  that;  but  that 
the  tree  of  life  was  on  each  side, —  on  this  side,  and  on 
that.  The  proper  use  of  either  was  vindicated  some  years 
ago  in  England,  by  the  Court  of  Chancery.  A  certain 
testator  left  property,  the  disposition  of  which  was  affected 
by  "the  death  of  either"  of  two  persons.  One  learned 
counsel  contended  that  the  word  "either"  meant  both; 
in  support  of  this  view  he  quoted  Richardson,  Webster, 
Chaucer,  Dryden,  Southey,  the  history  of  the  crucifixion, 
and  a  passage  from  the  Revelation.  The  learned  judge 
suggested  that  there  was  an  old  song  in  the  "  Beggar's 
Opera,"  known  to  all,  which  took  the  opposite  view: 

"  How  happy  could  I  be  with  either. 
Were  t'other  dear  charmer  away.'' 

In  pronouncing  judgment,  the  judge  dissented  entirely 
from  the  argument  of  the  learned  counsel.  "  Either,"  he 
said,  "  means  one  of  two,  and  does  not  mean  both." 
Though  occasionally,  by  poets  and  some  other  writers,  the 
word  was  employed  to  signify  both,  it  did  not  in  the  case 
before  the  court. 

Whether  is  a  contraction  of  u-hich  of  ei titer,  and 
therefore  cannot  be  correctly  applied  to  more  than  two 
objects. 

Never,  for  ever.  E.f/.,  "Charm  he  never  so  wisely"; 
"Let  the  offence  be  of  never  so  high  a  nature."  Many 
grammarians  approve  of  this  use  of  never;  but  its  cor- 
rectness, to  say  the  least,  is  doubtful.  In  such  sentences 
as  these,  "  He  was  deaf  to  the  voice  of  the  charmer,  charm 
he  ever  so  wisely,"  "  Were  it  ever  so  fine  a  day,  I  would 


454  WORDS;   their  use  and  abuse, 

not  go  out,"  the  word  ever  is  an  adverb  of  degree,  and  has 
nothing  to  do  with  time.  "If  I  take  ever  so  little  of  this 
drug,  it  will  kill  me,"  is  equivalent  to  "  however  little," 
or  "how  little  soever  I  take  of  this  drug,  it  will  kill  me." 
Harrison  well  says  on  this  point:  "Let  any  one  translate 
one  of  these  phrases  into  another  language,  and  he  will 
find  that  '  ever '  presents  itself  as  a  term  expressive  of  de- 
gree, and  not  of  time  at  all.  '  Charm  he  ever  so  wisely': 
Quamvis  incantandi  ait  per  it  iis  Viui  x>eritissimusy 

Seldom,  or  never  is  a  common  vulgarism.  Say  "  seldom, 
if  ever." 

Sit,  sat,  are  much  abused  words.  It  is  said  that  the 
brilliant  Irish  lawyer,  Curran,  once  carelessly  observed  in 
court,  "an  action  lays,"  and  the  judge  corrected  him  by 
remarking:  "Lies,  Mr.  Curran, —  hens  lay;"  but  when 
afterward  the  judge  ordered  a  counsellor  to  "  set  down," 
Curran  retaliated,  "Sit  down,  your  honor, —  hens  set." 
The  retort  was  characterized  by  more  wit  than  truth. 
Hens  do  not  set;  they  sit.  It  is  not  unusual  to  hear  per- 
sons say,  "The  coat  sets  well";  "The  wind  sets  fair." 
Sits  is  the  proper  word.  The  preterite  of  sit  is  often 
incorrectly  used  for  that  of  set ;  e.g.,  "  He  sat  off  for 
Boston." 

From  tlience,from  whence.  As  the  adverbs  thence  and 
U'hence  literally  supply  the  place  of  a  noun  and  preposi- 
tion, there  is  a  solecism  in  employing  a  preposition  in 
conjunction  with  them. 

Conduct.  In  conversation,  this  verb  is  frequently  used 
without  the  personal  pronoun;  as,  "he  conducts  well," 
for  "  he  conducts  himself  well." 

Least,  for  less.     "  Of  two  evils,  choose  the  least." 


COMMON"    IMPROPRIETIES    OF    .SPEECH.  ioo 

A  confirmed  invalid.  Can  weakness  be  strong?  If  not, 
how  can  a  man  be  a  confirmed,  or  strengthened,  invalid? 

Proposition,  for  proposal.  This  is  not  a  solecism,  but, 
as  a  univocal  word  is  preferable  to  one  that  is  equivocal, 
proposed,  for  a  thing  ofiered  or  proposed,  is  better  than 
proposition.  Strictly,  a  proposal  is  something  offered  to 
be  done;  a  proposition  is  something  submitted  to  one's 
consideration.  E.g.,  "  He  rejected  the  proposal  of  his 
friend;  "  "  he  demonstrated  the  fifth  proposition  in  Euclid." 

Previous,  for  previously.  "  Previous  to  my  leaving 
America." 

Appreciates,  for  rises  in  value.  "  Gold  appreciated 
yesterday."  Even  the  critical  London  Athenaeum  is  guilty 
of  this  solecism.  It  says:  "A  book  containing  personal 
reminiscences  of  one  of  our  great  schools  appeals  to  a  public 
limited,  no  doubt,  but  certain,  and  sure  to  appreciate.'^ 

Proven  for  proved,  and  plead  for  pleaded,  are  clearly 
vulgarisms. 

Bound,  for  ready  or  determined.  "  I  am  bound  to  do 
it."  We  may  say  properly  that  a  ship  is  "  bound  to  Liv- 
erpool"; but  in  that  case  we  do  not  employ,  as  man}' 
suppose,  the  past  participle  of  the  verb  to  bind,  but  the 
old  northern  participial  adjective,  buinn,  from  the  verb, 
at  baa,  signifying  "to  make  ready,  or  prepare."  Tlie 
term  is  strictly  a  nautical  one,  and  to  employ  it  in  a  sense 
that  unites  the  significations  both  of  buinn  and  the  English 
participle  bound  from  bind,  is  a  plain  abuse  of  language. 

No,  for  not.  E-{/;  "  Whether  I  am  there  or  no." 
Cowper  writes: 

"I  will  not  iisk  .Jean  Jacques  Rousseau, 
Whether  birUa  confabulate  or  no." 

By  supplying  the    ellipsis,   we   shall   see    that  not  is   here 


456  ■\V0KD6;    TllEIU    LSL    ASl)    ABUSE. 

the  proper  word.  "  Whether  birds  confabulate,  or  do  not 
confabulate,"  "  whether  I  am  there,  or  not  there."  No 
never  properly  qualifies  a  verb. 

Such  for  so.  E.g.,  '"I  never  saw  such  a  high  spire." 
This  means,  "  1  never  saw  a  high  spire  of  such  a  form," 
or  "of  such  architecture"  whereas  the  speaker,  in  _^all 
probability,  means  only  that  he  never  saw  so  high  a  spire. 
Such  denotes  quality;  so,  degree. 

Incorrect  orUioyraphij.  Orthography  means  '"  correct 
writing,  or  spelling."  "  Incorrect  orthography  "  is,  there- 
fore, equivalent  to  '"  incon-ect  correct  writing." 

Hoiv  for  that.  "  I  have  heard  how  some  critics  have 
been  pacified  with  claret  and  a  supper." 

Directly,  for  as  soon  as.  "  Directly  he  came,  I  went 
away  with  him." 

Equally  as  ivell,  for  equally  well.  E.g.,  '*  It  will  do 
equally  as  well." 

Supplement,  used  as  a  verb.  There  is  considerable 
authority  for  this  use  of  the  word;  but  it  is  a  case  where 
usage  is  clearly  opposed  to  the  very  principles  of  the 
language. 

Greet  and  greeting  are  often  improperly  used.  A  greet- 
ing is  a  salutation;  to  say,  therefore,  as  newspaper  re- 
porters often  do,  that  a  speaker  in  the  Legislature,  or  on 
the  platform,  was  "greeted  with  hisses,"  or  "with  groans," 
is  a  decided  "  malapropism." 

To  a  degree  is  a  phrase  often  used  by  English  writers 
and  speakers.  E.g.,  "Mr.  Gladstone  is  sensitive  to  a  de- 
gree."    To  what  degree? 

Farther  for  further.  "  Farther  "  is  the  comparative  of 
far,  and  should  be  used  in  speaking  of  bodies  relatively 
at  rest;    as,    "Jupiter    is    farther    from    the    earth    than 


COMMON    IMPROPRIETIES    OF    SPEECH.  -ij",' 

Mars."  ''Further''  is  the  comparative  of  "forth,"  and 
should  be  used  when  motion  is  e.xpressed;  as  "He  ran 
fui'ther  than  you." 

Quite  for  very.  E.g.,  In  Mrs.  Stowe's  "  Sunny  Mem- 
ories of  Foreign  Lands,"  we  read:  "The  speeches  were 
quite  interesting";  "we  had  quite  a  sociable  time  up  in 
the  gallery";  and  we  are  told  that  at  Mrs.  Cropper's,  "in 
the  evening,  quite  a  circle  came  in,"  etc.,  etc.  The  true 
meaning  of  "quite"  is  complefeli/,  entirelij. 

Effluiiuin.  The  plural  of  this  woi'd  is  often  used  as  if 
it  meant  bad  odors;  whereas  an  "effluvium"  may  be  a 
stream  either  of  pure  air  or  of  foul  air, —  of  pure  water 
or  of  impure,  etc. 

None  is  a  contraction  of  )io  one,  and  therefore  to  say 
"none  are,"  or  "none  were,"  is  just  as  improper  as  to  say 
"no  one  are,"  or  "no  one  were." 

I  watched  hint  do  it.  This  is  an  impropriety  of  speech 
rarely  heard  in  this  country,  but  often  in  England. 

Looks  beaut  if  uUy.  In  spite  of  the  frequency  with 
which  this  impropriety  has  been  censured,  one  hears  it 
almost  daily  from  the  lips  of  educated  men  and  women. 
The  error  arises  from  confounding  look  in  the  sense  of  to 
direct  the  eye,  and  look  in  the  sense  of  to  seem,  to  appear. 
In  English,  many  verbs  take  an  adjective  with  tiiom  to 
form  the  predicate,  where  in  other  hinguages  an  adverb 
would  be  used;  e.g.,  "he  fell  ill";  "he  feels  cold";  "her 
smiles  amid  the  blushes  lovelier  show."  No  cultivated 
person  would  say,  "she  is  beautifully,"  or  "she  seems 
beautifully,"  yet  these  phrases  are  no  more  improper  than 
"she  looks  beautifully."  We  qualify  what  a  person  does 
by  an  adverb;  what  a  person  /,s,  or  .seeius  to  be,  by  an 
adjective;  e.g.,  "  she  looks  coldly  on  him  ";  "  she  looks  cold." 


458  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

Leave,  as  an  intransitive  verb.  E.g.,  "He  left  yester- 
day." Many  persons  who  use  this  phrase  are  misled  by 
what  they  deem  the  analogous  expression,  to  tcrite,  to  read. 
These  verbs  express  an  occupation,  as  truly  as  to  run,  to 
iralk,  to  stand.  In  answer  to  the  question,  "  What  is  A. 
B.  doing?"  it  is  sufficient  to  say,  "He  is  reading."  Here 
a  complete  idea  is  conveyed,  which  is  not  true  of  the 
phrase,  "  He  left  yesterday." 

Myself,  for  I.  E.g.,  "  Mrs.  Jones  and  myself  will  be 
happy  to  dine  vsrith  you";  "Prof.  S.  and  myself  have 
examined  the  work."  The  proper  use  of  myself  is  either 
as  a  reflective  pronoun,  or  for  the  sake  of  distinction  and 
emphasis;  as  when  Juliet  cries,  "Romeo,  dotF  thy  name, 
and  for  that  name,  which  is  no  part  of  thee,  take  all 
myself";  oi',  in  Milton's  paradisiacal  hymn:  "These  are 
thy  glorious  works.  Parent  of  Good,  Almighty!  Thine  this 
universal  frame  thus  wondrous  fair!  Thyself  how  won- 
drous then!" 

Restive.  This  word,  which  means  inclined  to  rest,  obsti- 
nnte,  unwilling  to  go,  is  employed,  almost  constantly,  in  a 
sense  directly  the  reverse  of  this;  that  is,  for  restless. 

Quantity,  for  number.  E.g.,  "A  quantity  of  books"; 
"  a  quantity  of  postage  stamps."  In  speaking  of  a  collec- 
tion, or  mass,  it  is  proper  to  use  quantity;  but  in  speaking 
of  individual  objects,  however  many,  we  must  use  the 
word  number.  "A  quantity  of  meat,"  or  "  a  quantity  of 
iron  "  is  good  English,  but  not  "  a  quantity  of  bank-notes." 
We  may  say  "  a  quantity  of  wood,"  but  we  should  say  a 
"number  of  sticks." 

Carnival.  This  word  literalh'  means  "  Farewell  to 
meat,"  or,  as  some  etymologists  think,  "  Flesh,  be  strong!  " 
In  Catholic  countries  it  signifies  a  festival  celebrated  with 


COMMON    IMrUOPRIETIES    OF   SPEECH.  459 

merriment  and  i-evelry  during  the  week  before  Lent.  In 
this  country,  especially  in  newspaper  use,  it  is  employed 
in  the  sense  of  fun,  frolic,  spree,  festival;  and  that  so 
generally  as  almost  to  have  banished  some  of  these  words 
from  the  language.  If  many  persons  are  skating,  that  is 
a  carnival;  so,  if  they  take  a  sleigh-ride,  or  if  there  is  a 
rush  to  Long  Branch  in  the  summer.  As  we  have  a  plenty 
of  legitimate  words  to  describe  these  festivities,  the  use  of 
this  outlandish  term  has  not  a  shadow  of  justification. 

All  of  them.  As  of  here  means  out  of,  corresponding 
with  the  Latin  preposition  e,  or  ex,  it  cannot  be  correct  to 
say  all  of  them.  We  may  say,  "  take  one  of  them  "  or 
"  take  two  of  them,"  or  "take  them  all";  but  the  phrase 
we  are  criticising  is  wholly  unjustifiable. 

To  allude.  Among  the  iinpi-oprieties  of  speech  which 
even  those  sharp-eyed  literary  detectives,  Alford,  Moon, 
and  Gould  have  failed  to  pounce  upon  and  pillory,  are 
the  misuses  of  the  word  that  heads  this  paragraph.  Once  the 
verb  had  a  distinct,  well  defined  meaning,  but  it  is  now 
rapidly  losing  its  true  signification.  To  allude  to  a  thing, — 
what  is  it?  Is  it  not  to  speak  of  it  darkly, —  to  hint  at  it 
playfully  (from  ludo,  ludere, —  to  play),  without  any  direct 
mention?  Yet  the  word  is  used  in  a  sense  directly  opposite 
to  this.  Suppose  you  lose  in  the  street  some  package,  and 
advertise  its  loss  in  the  newspapers.  The  person  who  finds 
the  package  is  sure  to  reply  to  your  advertisement  by 
speaking  of  "  the  package  you  alluded  to  in  your  adver- 
tisement," though  you  have  alluded  to  nothing,  but  have 
told  your  story  in  the  most  distinct  and  straightforward 
manner  possible,  without  an  approximation  to  a  hint  or 
innuendo.  Newspaper  reporters,  by  their  abuse  of  this 
unhappy  word,  will  transform  a  bold  and  daring  speech  in 


460  woKDs;  THEIR  use  and  abuse. 

Congress,  in  which  a  senator  has  taken  some  bull  by  the 
horns, —  in  other  words,  dealt  openly  and  manfully  with 
the  subject  discussed, —  into  a  heap  of  dark  and  mysterious 
innuendoes.  The  honorable  gentleman  alluded  to  the  cur- 
rency—  to  the  war  —  to  Andrew  Johnson  —  to  the  New 
Orleans  massacre;  he  alluded  to  the  sympathizers  with  the 
South,  though  he  denounced  them  in  the  most  caustic 
terras;  he  alluded  to  the  tax-bill,  and  he  alluded  to  fifty 
other  things,  about  every  one  of  which  he  spoke  out  his 
mind  in  emphatic  and  unequivocal  terms.  An  English 
journal  tells  a  ludicrous  story  of  an  M.P.  who,  his  health 
having  been  drunk  by  name,  rose  on  his  legs,  and  spoke  of 
"  the  flattering  way  in  which  he  had  been  alluded  to." 
Another  public  speaker  spoke  of  a  book  which  had  been 
alluded  to  by  name.  But  the  climax  of  absurdity  in  the 
use  of  this  word  was  attained  by  an  Irish  M.P.,  who  wrote 
a  life  of  an  Italian  poet.  Quoting  Byron's  lines  about 
"  the  fatal  gift  of  beauty,"  he  then  goes  on  to  talk  about 
"  the  fatal  gift  which  has  been  already  alluded  to! " 

Either  alternative.  E.g.,  "  You  may  take  either  alter- 
native." "Two  alternatives  were  presented  to  me."  Alter- 
native evidently  means  a  choice, —  one  choice, —  between 
two  things.  If  there  be  only  one  otfered,  we  say  there  is 
no  alternative.  Two  alternatives  is,  therefox*e,  a  palpable 
contradiction  in  terms;  yet  some  speakers  talk  of  "  sevex'al 
alternatives  "  having  been  presented  to  them. 

Whole,  for  all.  The  "Spectator"  says:  "The  Red- 
Cross  Knight  runs  through  the  whole  steps  of  the  Christian 
life."  Alison,  who  is  one  of  the  loosest  writers  in  our 
literature,  declares,  in  his  "  History  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion," that  "  the  whole  Russians  are  inspired  with  the 
belief  that  their  mission  is  to  conquer  the  world."     This 


COMMON   IMPROPRIETIES   OF   SPEECH.  401 

can  only  mean  that  those  Russians  wlio  are  entire, —  who 
have  not  lost  a  leg,  an  arm,  or  some  other  part  of  the  body, 
—  are  inspired  with  the  belief  of  which  he  speaks.  If7<r)/c 
refers  to  the  component  parts  of  a  single  bod}',  and  is  there- 
fore singular  in  meaning. 

Jeopardize.  There  is  considerable  authority  for  this 
word,  which  is  iK'ginning  to  supplant  the  good  old  English 
word  jeopard.  But  why  is  it  more  needed  than  perilize, 
hazard  ize? 

Preventative.,  for  preventive;  conversationalist,  for  con- 
verger; tinderJianded,  for  underhand;  casual  it  i/,  for  casu- 
alty; speciaVttii,  for  specialty;  lenioicij,  for  lenity;  firsthj, 
for  first;  are  all  base  coinages,  barbarisms  which  should 
be  excommunicated  by  "bell,  book,  and  candle." 

Danr/eroKs,  for  in  danger.  A  leading  Boston  paper  says 
of  a  deceased  minister:  "  His  illness  was  only  of  a  week's 
duration,  and  was  pleurisy  and  rheumatism.  He  was  not 
supposed  to  be  dangerous." 

Nice.  One  of  the  most  offensive  barbarisms  now  preva- 
lent is  the  use  of  this  as  a  pet  word  to  express  almost  every 
kind  of  approbation,  and  almost  every  quality.  Strictly, 
ttice  can  be  used  only  in  a  subjective,  not  in  an  objective, 
sense;  though  both  of  our  leading  lexicographers  approve 
of  such  expressions  as  "a  nice  bit  of  cheese."  Of  the  vul- 
garity of  such  expressions  as  "a  nice  man"  (meaning  a 
good  or  pleasing  man),  "a  nice  da}',"  "a  nice  party,"  etc., 
there  cannot  be  a  shadow  of  doubt.  '•  A  nice  man  "  means 
a  fastidious  man;  a  "nice  letter"  is  a  letter  very  delicate 
in  its  language.  Some  persons  are  more  nice  than  wise. 
Archdeacon  Hare  complains  that  "this  characterless  dom- 
ino,"" as  he  stigmatizes  the  word  )iice.  is  continually  u^fd 
by  his  countrymen,  and  that  '"  a  universal  deluge  of  niascrie 


4G2  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

(for  the  word  was  originally  niais)  threatens  to  whelm  the 
whole  island."  The  Latin  word  eler/ans  seems  to  have  had 
a  similar  history;  being  derived  from  elego,  and  meaning 
primarily  nice  or  choice,  and  subsequently  elegant. 

Mutual,  for  common,  or  reciprocal.  Dean  Alford  justly 
protests  against  the  stereotyped  vulgarism,  "a  mutual 
friend."  Mutual  is  applicable  to  sentiments  and  acts,  but 
not  to  persons.  Two  friends  may  have  a  mutual  love,  but 
for  either  to  speak  of  a  third  person  as  being  "their  mutual 
friend,"  is  sheer  nonsense.  Yet  Dickens  entitled  one  of  his 
novels,  "  Our  Mutual  Friend." 

Stopping,  for  staying.  "  The  Hon.  John  Jones  is  stop- 
ping at  the  Sherman  House."  In  reading  such  a  statement 
as  this,  we  are  tempted  to  ask,  When  will  Mr.  Jones  stop 
stopping  ?  A  man  may  stop  a  dozen  times  at  a  place,  or  on 
a  journey,  but  he  cannot  continue  stopping.  One  may  stop 
at  a  hotel  without  becoming  a  guest.  The  true  meaning  of 
the  word  stop  was  well  understood  by  the  man  who  did  not 
invite  his  professed  friend  to  visit  him:  "If  3'ou  come,  at 
any  time,  within  ten  miles  of  my  house,  just  stop." 

Trifling  )ni)n(fia\  Archbishop  Whately,  in  his  "Rhet- 
oric," speaks  of  "trifling  minutiae  of  style."  In  like 
manner,  Henry  Kirke  White  speaks  of  liis  poems  as  being 
"  the  juvenile  efforts  of  a  youth,"  and  Disraeli,  the  author 
of  "  The  Curiosities  of  Literature,"  speaks  of  "  the  battles 
of  logomachy,"  and  of  "  the  m3'steries  of  the  arcana  of 
alchemy."  The  first  of  these  phrases  may  be  less  palpably 
tautological  than  the  other  three;  yet  as  niinutice  means 
nearly  the  same  things  as  trifles,  a  careful  writer  would  be 
as  advei'se  to  using  such  an  expression  as  Whately's,  as  he 
would  be  to  talking,  like  Sir  Ai'chibald  Alison,  of  representa- 


COMMON    IMl'KOl'RlETIES    OF    SPEECH.  4C3 

tive  institutions  as  having  been  reestablished  in  our  time 
"  by  tlie  influence  of  English  vlw^?omania/' 

Indices^  for  indexes.  "We  have  examined  our  indices," 
etc.,  say  the  Chicago  abstract-makers.  Indices  are  alge- 
braic signs;  tables  of  contents  are  indexes. 

Rendition,  for  rendering.  E.(/.,  "  Mr.  Booth's  rendition 
of  Hamlet  was  admirable."  Rendition  means  suri'ender, 
giving  up,  relinquishing  to  another;  as  when  we  speak  of 
the  rendition  of  a  beleaguered  town  to  the  besieger,  or  of  a 
pledge  upon  the  satisfaction  of  a  debt. 

Extend,  for  give.  Lecture  committees,  instead  of  simply 
inviting  a  public  speaker,  or  giving  liiin  an  invitation, 
almost  universally  extend  an  invitation;  perhaps,  because 
he  is  generally  at  a  considerable  distance.  Richard  Grant 
White  says  pertinently;  "As  extend  (from  ex  and  tendo) 
means  merely  to  stretch  forth,  it  is  much  better  to  say  that 
a  man  put  out,  offered,  or  stretched  forth  his  hand  than 
that  he  extended  it.  Shakespeare  makes  the  pompous, 
pragmatical  Malvolio  say:  'I  extend  my  hand  to  him 
thus';  but  'Paul  stretched  forth  the  hand,  and  answered 
for  himself.'  This,  however,  is  a  question  of  taste,  not  of 
correctness." 

Except,  for  unless.  E.g.,  "  No  one,  except  he  has  served 
an  apprenticeship,  need  apply."  The  former  word  is  a 
preposition,  and  must  be  followed  by  a  noun  or  pronoun, 
and  not  by  a  proposition. 

Couple,  for  a  pair  or  brace.  When  two  persons  or 
things  are  joined  or  linked  together,  they  form  a  couple. 
The  numltcr  of  things  that  can  be  coupled  is  compara- 
tively sm;ill,  yet  the  expression  is  in  constant  use;  as  "a 
couple  of  books,"  "a  couple  of  partridges,"  "a  couple  of 


4G4  AVORDs;  tiip:ir  use  and  abuse. 

weeks,"  etc.  One  might  as  well  speak  of  "  a  pair  of 
dollars." 

Everij.  E.g.,  "  I  have  every  confidence  in  him  ";  "  they 
rendered  me  every  assistance."  Erenj  denotes  all  the  in- 
dividuals of  a  number  greater  than  two,  separately  consid- 
ered. Derived  from  the  Anglo-Saxon,  cffer,  ever,  ceic, 
each,  it  means  each  of  all,  not  all  in  mass.  By  "every 
confidence"  is  meant  simply  perfect  confidence;  by  "every 
assistance,"  all  possible  assistance. 

Almost,  as  an  adjective.  Prof.  Whitne}^  in  his  able 
work  on  "  Language,  and  the  Study  of  Language,"  speaks 
of  "  the  almost  universality  of  instruction  among  us." 

Condign.  E.g.,  "  He  does  not  deserve  the  condign  pun- 
ishment he  has  received."  As  the  meaning  of  condign  is 
that  which  is  deserved,  we  have  here  a  contradiction  in 
terms,  the  statement  being  equivalent  to  this:  "he  does 
not  deserve  the  deserved  punishment  he  has  received." 

Paraphernal ia.  This  is  a  big,  sounding  word  from  the 
Greek,  which  some  newspaper  writers  are  constantly  mis- 
using. It  is  strictly  a  law-term,  and  means  whatever  the 
wife  brings  with  her  at  marriage  in  addition  to  her  dower. 
Her  dress  and  her  ornaments  are  paraphernalia.  To  apply 
the  term  to  an  Irishman's  sash  on  St.  Patrick's  day,  or  to  a 
Freemason's  hieroglyphic  apron,  it  has  been  justly  said, 
is  not  only  an  abuse  of  language,  but  a  clear  invasion  of 
woman's  rights. 

Setting-room,  for  sitting-room,  is  a  gross  vulgarism, 
which  is  quite  common,  even  with  those  who  deem  them- 
selves nice  people.  "  I  saw  your  children  in  the  setting- 
room,  as  I  went  past,"  said  a  well-dressed  woman  in  our 
hearing,  in  a  horse-car.     How  could  she    go   past?     It  is 


CO.MMOX    IMPROPRIETIES    OF    SPEECH.  465 

not  difficult  to  go  h)j  any  olyect;  but  to  go  past  is  a  con- 
tradiction in  terms. 

An  innumeraJiJc  nuDiber  is  an  absurd  expression,  which 
is  used  by  some  persons, —  not,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  "an  innu- 
merable number"  of  times. 

Seraphim^  for  seraph;  the  plural  for  the  singular. 
Even  Addison  says:  "The  zeal  of  the  seraphim  breaks 
forth,"  etc.  This  is  as  ludicrous  as  the  language  of  the 
Indiana  justice,  who  spoke  of  "  the  first  claw  of  the  stat- 
ute," or  the  answer  of  the  man  who,  when  asked  whether 
he  had  no  politics,  replied,  "  Not  a  single  politic." 

People,  for  persons,  "  Many  people  think  so."  Better, 
persons;  people  means  a  body  of  persons  regarded  col- 
lectively, a  nation. 

Off  of,  for  oif.     "  Cut  a  yard  off  of  the  cloth." 

More  perfect,  most  perfect.  What  shall  be  said  of  these 
and  similar  forms  of  expression?  Doubtless  they  should 
be  discouraged,  though  used  by  Shakespeare  and  Milton. 
It  may  be  argued  in  their  favor,  that,  though  not  logically 
correct,  yet  they  are  rhetorically  so.  It  is  true  that,  as 
"  twenty  lions  cannot  be  more  twenty  than  twenty  flies," 
so  nothing  can  be  more  perfect  than  perfection.  But  we 
do  not  object  to  say  that  one  man  is  hrarer  than  another, 
or  iriser,  though,  if  we  had  an  absolute  standard  of 
bravery  or  wisdom, —  that  is,  a  clear  idea  of  them. —  wo 
should  pronounce  either  of  the  two  persons  to  be  simply 
brave  or  not  brave,  wise  or  not  wise.  We  say  that  Smith 
is  a  better  man  than  Jones,  though  no  one  is  absolutely 
good  but  Ood.  These  forms  are  used  because  language  is 
inadequate  to  express  the  intensity  of  the  thought, —  as  in 
Milton's  "  most  wisest,  virtuousest,  discreetest,  best,"  or 
the  line.s, 


466  words;  theik  use  and  abuse. 

"  And  in  the  lowest  deep  a  louer  deep, 
Still  threatening  to  devour  me,  opens  wide, 
To  which  the  hell  I  suffer  gecnis  a  heaven." 

Milton  abounds  in  these  illogical  expressions,  as  do  the 
best  Greek  poets;  and  one  of  the  happiest  verses  in  the 
poems  of  W.  W.  Story  is  a  similar  intentional  contradic- 
tion, as 

"Of  every  noble  work  the  silent  part  is  best; 
Of  all  expression,  that  which  cannot  be  expressed." 

Uffly,  for  ill-tempered.  A  leading  New  York  divine  is 
reported  as  saying  of  an  ill-tempered  child,  that  "  he  wants 
all  he  sees,  and  screams  if  he  does  not  get  it;  ugly  as  he 
can  be,  no  matter  who  is  disturbed  by  it." 

Is,  for  are.  One  of  the  most  frequent  blemishes  in 
English  prose  is  the  indiscriminate  use  of  singulars  and 
plurals.  E.g.,  Junius  writes:  "  Both  minister  and  mag- 
istrate is  compelled  to  choose  between  his  duty  and  his 
reputation."  Even  Lindley  Murray  writes:  "  Their  gen- 
eral scope  and  tendency  is  not  remembered  at  all " ;  and 
Milton  sings: 

"For  their  mind  and  spirit  remains  invincible." 

Some  grammarians  defend  these  forms  of  expression  on 
the  ground  that  when  two  or  more  nouns  singular  repre- 
sent a  single  idea,  the  verb  to  which  they  are  the  nomina- 
tive may  be  put  in  the  singular.  The  answer  to  this  is, 
that  if  the  nouns  express  the  same  idea,  one  of  them  is 
superfluous;  if  different  ideas,  then  they  form  a  plural, 
and  the  verb  should  be  plural  also.  Another  quibble 
employed  to  justify  such  expressions,  is  that  the  verb, 
which  is  expressed  after  the  last  noun,  is  considered  as 
understood  after  the  first.  But  we  are  not  told  how  this 
process  of  subaudition  can  go  on  in  the  mind  of  the  reader, 


COM.MON    IMI'KOI'KIETIES    OF   SPEECH.  407 

before  be  knows  what  the  verb  is  to  be;  and  while  ellipsis 
not  only  is  in  many  cases  permissible,  but  gives  concise- 
ness and  energy  to  style,  yet  there  is  a  limit  beyond  which 
it  cannot  be  pushed  without  leading  to  literary  anarchy. 

Caption,  for  heading.  E.g.,  "The  caption  of  this  news- 
paper article."  Caption  means  that  part  of  a  legal  instru- 
ment which  shows  where,  when,  and  by  what  authority  it 
was  taken,  found,  or  executed. 

To  extremehj  maltreat.  This  phrase  from  Trench  is  an 
example  of  a  very  common  solecism.  To,  the  sign  of  the 
infinitive,  should  never  be  separated  from  the  verb.  Say 
"  to  maltreat  extremely,"  or  "  extremely  to  maltreat." 

Accord,  for  gi-ant.  "  He  accorded  them  (or  to  them) 
all  they  asked  for."  To  accord  nith  means  properly  to 
agree  or  to  suit;  as,,  "  He  accorded  with  my^  views." 

Enthuse,  a  word  used  by  some  clergymen,  is  not  to  be 
found  either  in  Worcester's  Dictionary  or  in  Webster's 
"  Unabridged." 

PersonaJttj.  This  word  is  supposed  by  some  persons 
to  mean  articles  worn  on  one's  person.  Some  years  ago, 
a  lady,  in  England,  who  had  made  this  mistake,  and  who 
wished  to  leave  to  her  servant  her  clothing,  jewels,  etc., 
described  them  as  her  p>ersonaltij,  and  unwittingly  included 
in  her  bequest  ten  thousand  pounds. 

Do.  This  verb  is  often  used  incorrectly  as  a  substitute 
for  other  verbs;  as,  "I  did  not  say,  as  some  have  done." 
We  may  properly  say,  "I  did  not  say,  as  some  do"  (■•^ai/), 
for  here  the  ellipsis  of  the  preceding  verb  may  be  supplied. 

On  to,  for  on,  or  upon.  "He  got  on  to  an  omnibus;" 
"  He  jumped  on  to  a  chair."  The  preposition  to  is  super- 
fluous.    Say,  "  He  got  upon  an  omnibus,"  etc.     Some  per- 


4G8  AVORDS;   TIIEn{    USE    AND    AIJUSE. 

sons  speak  of  "continuing  on,"'  nhich    is  as  objectionable 
as  "  He  went  to  Boston  for  to  see  the  city." 

Older,  for  elder.  Older  is  properly  applied  to  objects, 
animate  and  inanimate;  elder,  to  rational  beings. 

Overjiown,  for  overflowed.  "  The  river  has  overflown." 
Floived  is  the  participle  of  "  to  flow  " ;  jjoicn,  of  "  to  fly." 

Spoonsful,  for  spoonfuls,  and  effluria  for  effluvium,  are 
very  common  errors.  "  A  disagreeable  effluvia"  is  as  gross 
a  mistake  as  "  an  inexplicable  phenomena." 

Scarcely,  for  hardly.  Scarcely  pertains  to  quantity; 
hardly,  to  degi-ee;  as,  "There  is  scarcely  a  bushel";  "I 
shall  hardly  finish  my  job  by  night-fall." 

Fare  thee  tvell,  which  has  Byron's  authority,  is  plainly 
wrong. 

Community,  io^  the  community;  as  "Community  will 
not  submit  to  such  outrages."  Prof.  Marsh  has  justly 
censured  this  vulgarism.  Who  would  think  of  saying, 
"Public  is  interested  in  this  question"?  When  we  per- 
soiify  common  nouns  used  definitely  in  the  singular  num- 
ber, we  may  omit  the  article,  as  when  we  speak  of  the 
doings  of  Parliament,  or  of  Holy  Church.  "  During  the 
Revolution,"  says  Professor  M.,  "  while  the  federal  gov- 
ernment was  a  body  of  doubtful  authority  and  perma- 
nence, .  .  .  the  phrase  used  was  always  '  the  Congress,' 
and  such  is  the  form  of  expression  in  the  Constitution 
itself.  But  when  the  Government  became  consolidated, 
and  Congress  was  recognized  as  the  paramount  legislative 
power  of  the  Union,  ...  it  was  personified,  and  the  arti- 
cle dropped,  and,  in  like  manner,  the  word  Government 
is  often  used  in  the  same  way." 

Folks  for  folk.  As  folk  implies  plurality,  the  s  is 
needless. 


COMMON    IMPROPRIETIES    OF   SPEECH.  i'-O 

Mussuhnen.  Mussulman  is  not  a  compound  of  man,  and, 
therefore,  like  Gernuin,  it  forms  its  plural  by  adding  s. 

Drive,  for  ride.  A  lady  says  that  "  she  is  going  to  drive 
in  the  park,"  when  she  intends  that  her  servant  shall  drive 
(not  her,  but)  the  horses. 

Try  and,  for  try  to.     E.g.,  "Try  and  do  it." 

Whole,  entire,  complete,  and  total,  are  words  which  are 
used  almost  indiscriminately  by  many  persons.  That  is 
tvhole,  from  which  nothing  has  been  taken;  that  is  entire, 
which  has  not  been  divided;  that  is  complete,  which  has  all 
its  parts.  Total  refers  to  the  aggregate  of  the  parts. 
Thus  we  say,  a  whole  loaf  of  bread;  an  entire  set  of 
spoons;  a  complete  harness;  the  total  cost  or  expense. 

Succeed,  for  give  success  to,  or  cause  to  succeed.  E.g., 
"  If  Providence  succeed  us  in  this  work."  Both  Webster 
and  Worcester  justify  this  use  of  succeed  as  a  transitive 
verb;  but  if  not  now  grammatically  objectionable,  as 
formerly,  it  is  still  to  be  avoided  on  the  ground  of  am- 
biguity. In  the  phrase  quoted,  succeed  may  mean  either 
cause  to  succeed,  or  follow. 

Tartar  should  be,  strictly,  Tatar.  When  the  Tatar 
hordes,  in  the  thirteenth  century,  bux'st  forth  from  the 
Asiatic  steppes,  this  fearful  invasion  was  thought  to  be  a 
fulfilment  of  the  prediction  of  the  opening  of  the  bottom- 
less pit,  as  portrayed  in  the  ninth  chapter  of  Revelations. 
To  bring  the  name  into  relation  with  Tartarus,  Tatar  was 
written,  as  it  still  continues  to  be  written,  Tartar. 

The  following  is  an  example  of  a  very  common  error  in 
the  arrangement  of  words: 

"Dead  in  uins  and  in  tiansgrcssionB 
»  Jc'Siis  cast  his  eyt'8  on  ine, 

And  of  his  divine  possessions 
Bade  mu  then  a  t<liarer  be;°'  etc. 


470  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

Though  such  is  not  the  writer's  intention,  he  really 
speaks  of  Jesus  as  being  "  dead  in  sins  and  in  transgres- 
sions"; for  the  syntax  of  the  verse  admits  of  no  other 
meaning. 

Nuineroits,  for  many.  To  speak  of  "  our  numerous 
friends"  is  to  say  that  each  friend  is  numerous. 

That  of;  as,  "  He  chose  for  a  profession  lliaf  of  the 
law."  This  is  equivalent  to  saying:  He  chose  for  a  pro- 
fession the  profession  of  law;  or,  he  chose  a  profession  for 
a  profession.  Why  not  say,  "  He  chose  law  for  a  profes- 
sion"? 

Fellow  countrymen.  What  is  the  difference  between 
"countrymen"  and  "fellow  countrymen?" 

Distinguish,  for  discriminate.  To  distinguish  is  to 
mark  broad  and  plain  differences;  to  discriminate  is  to 
notice  minute  and  subtle  shades  of  difference. 

Transpire,  for  to  happen.  "Transpire"  meant  origi- 
nally to  emit  insensible  vapor  through  the  pores  of  the 
skin.  Afterward  it  was  used  metaphorically  in  the  sense 
of  to  become  known,  to  pass  from  secrecy  into  publicity. 
But  to  say  that  a  certain  event  "  transpired  yesterday," 
meaning  that  it  occurred  then,  is  a  gross  vulgarism. 

Ventilate,  for  discuss. 

Hung,  for  hanged.  "  Hang,"  when  it  means  to  take 
away  life  by  public  execution,  is  a  regular  verb. 

Bid,  for  bade.  E.g.,  The  London  "Times"  says:  "He 
called  his  servants,  and  hid  them  procure  fire-arms." 

Dare,  for  durst.  "  Neither  her  maidens  nor  the  priest 
dare  speak  to  her  for  half  an  hour,"  says  the  Rev. 
Chai'les  Kingsley,  in  one  of  his  novels. 

In,  for  within.     E.g.,  "Is  Mr.  Smith  in?" 

Notivithstanding,  for  although.     E.g.,  "  Notwithstanding 


COMMON    IMPHOI'HIKTIES    OF   SPEEPII.  471 

they  fought  bravely,  they  were  defeated."  "  Notwithstand- 
ing "  is  a  preposition,  and  cannot  be  correctly  used  as  a 
conjunction. 

Tuo  good  ones.  "  Among  all  the  apples  there  were  but 
two  good  ones."     Two  oncsi:' 

Raising  the  rent,  for  increasing  the  rent.  A  landlord 
notified  his  tenant  tliat  he  should  raise  his  rent.  "  TliaiiU 
you,"  was  the  rei)ly:  '"  1  tiiid  it  very  hard  to  raise  it  my- 
self." 

Was,  for  is.  "Two  young  men,"  says  Swift,  "have 
made  a  discovery,  that  there  was  a  God."  That  there  mis 
a  God?  When?  This  year,  or  last  year,  or  ages  ago? 
All  general  truths  should  be  expressed  by  the  use  of  verbs 
in.  the  present  tense. 

Sliall  and  icill.  There  are,  perhaps,  no  two  words  in 
the  language  which  are  more  frequently  confounded  or 
used  inaccurately,  than  sliall  and  iciU.  Certain  it  is,  that 
of  all  the  rocks  on  which  foreigners  split  in  the  use  of  the 
Queen's  English,  there  is  none  which  so  puzzles  and  per- 
plexes them  as  the  distinction  between  these  little  words. 
Originally  both  words  were  em))loyi'd  for  the  same  purpose 
in  other  languages  of  the  same  stock  with  ours;  but  their 
use  has  been  worked  out  by  the  descendants  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxons,  until  it  has  attained  a  degree  of  nicety  remarkable 
in  itself,  and  by  no  means  easy  of  acquisition  even  by  tho 
subjects  of  Victoria  or  by  Americans.  Every  one  has  heard 
of  the  Dutchman  who,  on  falling  into  a  river,  cried  out, 
"I  will  drown,  and  nobody  shall  help  me."  The  Irish  are 
perpetually  using  shall  for  ivill,  while  the  Scotch  use  of 
will  for  sliall  is  equally  inveterate  and  universal.  Dr. 
Chalmers  says:  "I  am  not  able  to  devote  as  mncli  time 
and  attention  to  other  subjects  as  I  will  be  under  the  neces- 


472  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

sity  of  doing  next  winter."  The  use  of  ^h<ill  fox-  tviU,  in 
the  following  passage,  has  led  some  critics  strongly  to  sus- 
pect that  the  author  of  the  anonymous  work,  "  Vestiges 
of  Creation,"  is  a  Scotchman:  "I  do  not  expect  that  any 
word  of  praise  which  this  work  may  elicit  shall  ever  be 
responded  to  by  me;  or  that  any  word  of  censure  shall 
ever  be  parried  or  deprecated."  This  awkward  use  of 
shall,  we  have  seen,  is  not  a  Scotticism;  yet  it  is  curious 
to  see  how  a  writer  who  pertinaciously  shrouds  himself  in 
mystery,  may  be  detected  by  the  blundering  use  of  a  mon- 
osyllable. So  the  use  of  the  possessive  neuter  pronoun 
its  in  the  poems  which  Chatterton  wrote  and  palmed  off 
as  the  productions  of  one  Rowlie,  a  monk  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  betrayed  the  forgery, —  inasmuch  as  that  little 
monosyllable,  its,  now  so  common  and  convenient,  did  not 
find  its  way  into  the  language  till  about  the  time  of  Shake- 
speare. Milton  never  once  uses  it,  nor,  except  as  a  mis- 
print, is  it  to  be  found  anywhere  in  the  Bible. 

Gilfillan,  a  Scotch  writer,  thus  uses  will  for  shall:  "If 
we  look  within  the  rough  and  awkward  outside,  we  will 
be  richly  rewarded  by  its  perusal."  So  Alison,  the  his- 
torian: "We  know  to  what  causes  our  past  reverses  have 
been  owing,  and  we  will  have  ourselves  to  blame  if  they 
are  again  incurred."  Macaulay  observes  that  "  not  one 
Londoner  in  a  thousand  ever  misplaces  his  will  and  shall. 
Doctor  Robinson  could,  undoubtedly,  have  written  a  lumi- 
nous dissertation  on  the  use  of  those  words.  Yet,  even  in 
his  latest  work,  he  sometimes  misplaced  them  ludicrously." 
But  Doctor  Johnson  was  a  Londoner,  and  he  did  not  always 
use  his  shalls  and  icills  correctly,  as  will  be  seen  by  the 
following  extract  from  a  letter  to  Boswell  in  1774:  '"You 
must  make  haste  and   gather   me   all  vou   can.  and  do  it 


COMMON    IMI'KOPHIETIES    OF   SPEECH.  473 

quickly,  or  I  uiU  and  sltaU  do  without,  it."  In  tlii>  anti- 
climax Johnson  meant  to  emphasize  the  latter  of  tlie  aux- 
iliaries. But  shall  (Saxon,  sceal ^  iwcesse  est)  in  the  tirst 
person,  simply  foretells;  as,  "I  shall  go  to  New  York  to- 
morrow." On  the  other  hand,  iviU,  in  the  first  person, 
not  only  foretells,  but  promises,  or  declares  the  resolution 
to  do  a  thing;  as,  "I  will  pay  you  what  I  owe  you."  The 
Doctor  should  have  said:  "I  shall  and  will  do  without  it." 
putting  the  strongest  term  last.  The  confusion  of  tlu^ 
two  words  is  steadily  increasing  in  this  country.  For- 
merly the  only  Americans  who  confounded  them  were 
Southerners;  now,  the  misuse  of  the  word  is  stealing 
through  the  North.  E.g.,  "I  will  go  to  town  to-morrow, 
and  shall  take  an  early  opportunity  of  calling  on  your 
friend  there."  '"  We  will  never  look  on  his  like  again." 
A  writer  in  a  New  York  paper  says:  '"None  of  our  coal 
mines  are  deep,  but  the  time  is  coming  when  we  will  have 
to  dig  deeper  in  search  of  both  coal  and  metallic  ores." 
Again,  we  hear  persons  speak  thus:  '"Let  us  keep  a  sharp 
lookout,  and  we  will  avoid  all  danger." 

Shakespeare  rarely  confounded  the  two  words;  for  ex- 
ample, in  "Coriolanus": 

"  Cor.    Shall  remain  1 

Hear  you  this  Triton  of  the  minnows*  mark  you 
His  absolute  shall T' 

Again,  in  Antony  and  Cleopatra: 

*'ifeiio.    Wilt  thou  be  lord  of  the  whole  world? 
Senator.    lie  shall  to  the  market-place.'' 

Wordsworth,  too,  who  is  one  of  the  most  accurate 
writers  in  our  literature,  nicely  discriminates  in  his  use 
of  shall  and  iciil : 


474  words;  their  use  axd  abuse. 

"Thi8  cliiltl  I  to  myself  will  take; 
She  shall  Ix;  mine,  and  I  will  make 
A  lady  of  my  own. 
The  staris  of  midnijrht  shall  be  dear 
To  her;  and  nhe  shall  lean  her  ear 
In  many  a  secret  place 

Where  rivulets  dance  their  wayward  round, 
And  beauty  born  of  murmuring  sound 
Shall  pass  into  her  face."  r 

In  the  last  passage  determination  is  expressed,  and  there- 
fore sAa//  is  properly  used. 

When  the  Bible  was  translated,  the  language  was  in 
a  state  of  transition;  hence  we  read  in  Kings  ii:  "Ahab 
shall  slay  me,"  for  u-'dL  In  Genesis  xliii,  3-5,  the  two 
words  are  nicely  discriminated.  The  distinction  between 
them,  strange  to  say,  is  entirely  ignored  in  the  Revised 
Version;  as  e.g.,  Peter  is  told,  "Thou  shalt  deny  me 
thrice";  and  we  read:  "One  of  you  shall  betray  me," 
where  futurity  only  is  expressed  in  the  Greek. 

According  to  Grimm,  "shall"  is  derived  from  skaJan, 
the  Scandinavian  word  for  the  pain  of  death,  which  is  also 
the  source  of  our  word  "kill."  The  predominant  idea  in 
"shall"  is  that  of  doom.  When  choosing  a  term  to  ex- 
press the  inevitable  future,  the  foundei's  of  our  lan- 
guage chose  a  term  the  most  expressive  possible  of 
a  fatal,  inevitable  future.  As  "  shall "  contains  the 
idea  of  doom,  "will"  conveys  the  idea  of  choice.  The 
general  rule  to  be  followed  in  the  use  of  the  two  words 
is,  that  when  the  simple  idea  of  future  occurrence  is  to 
be  expressed,  unconnected  with  the  speaker's  resolve,  we 
must  use  shdll  in  the  first  person,  and  will  in  the  second 
and  third;  as,  "I  shall  die,  you  will  die,  he  will  die";  but 
when  the  idea  of  compulsion  or  necessity  is  to  be  conveyed, 
— a  futurity  connected  with  the  will  of  the  speaker,— »/// 
must    be   employed   in    the    first  person,  and  sliall  in   the 


C03OI0X    IMPROPRIETIES    OF   SPEECH.  4T5 

second  and  third;  as,  "  I  will  go,  you  shall  go,  he  shall  go." 
"I  shall  attain  to  thirty  at  my  next  birthday"  merely 
foretells  the  age  to  which  the  speaker  will  have  reached 
at  his  next  birthday;  "I  will  attain  to  thirty  at  ray  next 
biitliday"  would  imply  a  determination  to  be  so  old  at 
the  time  mentioned.  "You  shall  have  some  money  to- 
morrow" would  imply  a  promise  to  pay  it;  "you  will 
have  some  money  to-morrow"  would  only  imply  an 
expectation  that  the  person  addressed  would  receive  some 
money. 

Similar  to  the  misuse  of  shaU  and  iriJI,  is  that  of  iroiiJd 
for  should;  as,  "You  promised  that  it  would  be  done;" 
"  But  for  reinforcements  we  would  have  been  beaten." 
Mr.  Brace,  in  his  work  on  Hungary,  makes  the  people  of 
that  country  say  of  Kossuth:  "He  ought  to  have  known 
that  we  would  be  ruined," —  which  can  only  mean  "  we 
wished  to  be  ruined." 

The  importance  of  attending  to  the  distinction  of  shall 
and  will,  and  to  the  nice  distinctions  of  words  generally, 
is  strikingly  illustrated  by  an  incident  in  Massachusetts. 
In  1844,  Abner  Rogers  was  tried  in  that  state  for  the 
murder  of  the  wai'den  of  the  penitentiary.  The  man  who 
had  been  sent  to  search  the  prisoner,  said  in  evidence: 
"  He  (Rogers)  said,  '  I  have  fixed  the  warden,  and  I'll  have 
a  rope  round  my  neck.'  On  the  strength  of  what  he  said, 
I  took  his  suspenders  from  him."  Being  cross-examined, 
the  witness  said  hi.-s  words  were:  "  I  will  have  a  rope," 
not  "  I  shall  have  a  rope."  The  counsel  against  the  pris- 
oner argued  that  he  declared  an  intention  of  suicide,  to 
escape  from  the  penalty  of  the  law,  which  he  knew  he  had 
incurred.  On  the  other  hand,  shall  would,  no  doubt,  have 
been  regarded  as  a  betrayal  of  his  consciousness  of  having 


476  words;  their  use  and  abuse. 

incurred  a  felon's  doom.  The  prisoner  was  acquitted  on 
tlie  ground  of  insanity.  Strange  that  tlic  fate  of  an 
alleged  murderer  should  turn  upon  the  question  which 
he  used  of  two  little  words  that  are  so  frequently  con- 
founded, and  employed  one  for  the  other!  It  would  he 
difficult  to  conceive  of  a  more  pregnant  comment  on 
the  importance  of  using  words  with  discrimination  and 
accuracy. 

It  would  be  impossible,  in  the  limits  to  which  we  are 
restricted,  to  give  all  the  nice  distinctions  to  be  observed  in 
the  use  of  shall  and  will.  For  a  full  explanation  of  the 
subject  we  must  refer  the  unlearned  reader  to  the  various 
English  grammars,  and  such  works  as  Sir  E.  W.  Head's 
treatise  on  the  two  words,  and  the  works  on  Synonyms 
by  Graham,  Crabb,  and  Whately.  Prof  Scheie  DeYere, 
in  his  late  "  Studies  in  Language,"  expresses  the  opinion 
that  this  double  futui-e  is  a  great  beauty  of  the  English 
language,  but  that  it  is  impossible  to  give  any  rule  for  its 
use,  which  will  cover  all  cases,  and  that  the  only  sure 
guide  is  "  that  instinct  which  is  given  to  all  who  learn  a 
language  with  their  mother's  milk,  or  who  acquire  it  so 
successfully  as  to  master  its  spirit  as  well  as  its  form." 
His  use  of  uill  for  shaU,  in  this  very  work,  verifies  the 
latter  part  of  this  statement,  and  shows  that  a  foreigner 
may  have  a  profound  knowledge  of  the  genius  and  con- 
stitution of  a  language,  and  yet  be  sorely  puzzled  by  its 
niceties  and  subtleties.  "  If  we  go  back,"  he  says,  "  for 
the  purpose  of  thus  tracing  the  history  of  nouns  to  the 
oldest  forms  of  English,  we  will  there  find  the  method 
of  forming  them  from  the  first  and  simplest  elements" 
(page  140).  The  "Edinburgh  Review""  denounces  the 
distinction  of  shall  and  will,  by  their  neglect  of  which  the 


COMMON    IMPROPKIETIES   OP   SPEECH.  477 

Scotch  are  so  often  bewrayed,  as  one  of  the  most  capricious 
and  inconsistent  of  all  imaginable  irregularities,  and  as  at 
variance  not  less  with  original  etymology  than  with  former 
usage.  Prof.  Marsh  regards  it  as  a  verbal  quibble,  which 
will  soon  disappear  from  our  language.  It  is  a  quibble 
just  as  any  distinction  is  a  quibble  to  persons  who  are  too 
dull,  too  lazy,  or  too  careless  to  apprehend  it.  With  as 
much  propriety  might  the  distinction  between  the  indica- 
tive and  subjunctive  forms  of  the  verb,  or  the  distinction 
between  farther  and  further,  strong  and  robust,  empti/  and 
vacant,  be  pronounced  a  verbal  quibble.  Sir  Edmund  W. 
Head  has  shown  that  the  difference  is  not  one  which  has 
an  existence  only  in  the  pedagogue's  brain,  but  that  it  is  as 
real  and  legitimate  as  that  between  he  and  am,  and  dates 
back  as  far  as  Wicliffe  and  Chaucer,  while  it  has  also  the 
authority  of  Shakespeare. 

We  conclude  this  chapter  with  the  following  lines   by 
an  English  poet: 

"Beyond  the  vague  Atlantic  deep, 
Far  as  the  farthest  prairies  pweep, 
Where  forest  glooms  the  ner%-es  appall, 
Where  hums  the  radiant  western  fall, 
One  duty  lies  on  old  and  young,— 
With  filial  piety  to  guard, 
As  on  its  greenest  native  sward, 
The  glory  of  the  English  tongue. 
That  ample  speech!    That  subtle  speech  I 
Apt  for  the  need  of  all  and  each: 
Strong  to  endure,  yet  prompt  to  bend 
Wherever  human  feelings  tend. 
Preserve  its  force,— conserve  its  powers; 
And  through  the  maze  of  civic  life. 
In  letters,  commerce,  even  in  strife, 
Forget  not  it  is  yours  and  ours." 


PRINCIPAL  BOOKS  CONSULTED. 


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1863. 
Akistotle.    Rhetoric.    Translated  by  John  Gillies.     London,  1823. 
S.v.MUEii  Bailey.     Discourses  on  Various  Subjects.    London,  1862. 
W.  L.  Blackley.     Word-Gossip.     London,  1869. 
Francis  Bowen.    Treatise  on  Logic.    Boston,  1874. 
Breen.    Modern  English  Literature.    Londoa. 
John  Eari.e.     Philology  of  the  English  Tongue.    Oxford,  1871. 
William  C.  Fowler,     llie  English  Language  in  its  Elements  and 

Forms.    New  York,  1860. 

F.  W.  Farrar.     The  Origin  of  Language.    London,  1860. 

"  Chapters  on  iMuguage.     London,  1873. 

''  Families  of  Speech.    London,  1873. 

L  Plant  Fle.ming.     Analysis  (f  the  English  Language.     London, 
1809. 

G.  F.  Graham.    A  Book  about  Words.    London,  1869. 
Richard  Garnett.    Philological  Essays.    London,  1859. 
]\Lattiiew  Harrison.     The  liise,  Progress,  and  Present  Structure 

of  the  English  Language.     London,  1848. 

Edward  N.  Hoare.     Exotics,  or  English  Words  Derived  from  Litin 
Roots.    London,  1863. 

Edmund  W.  Head.    "  Shall "  and  "WilV    London,  1858. 

K.  G.  Latham.     The  English  Lfinguage.    London,  1873. 

George  C  Lewis.    Remarks  on  the  Use  and  Abuse  of  Some  Politi- 
cal Terms.    O.xford,  1877. 

Mark  A.  Lower.     An  Essay  on  Family  Nomenclature.    (Tw(i  Vol- 
umes.)    London,  1875. 

George  P.  >Iarsh.     Lectures  on  the  English  Language.     New  York, 
1860. 
"  The  Origin  and  History  of  the  English  Lan- 

guage.   New  York,  1862. 

479 


480  PRINCIPAL    BOOKS    CONSULTED. 

J.  S.  Mill.    A  System  of  Logic.    New  York,  1869. 

AIax  Muller.     Leclures  on  the  Snence  of  Lnnriunfie.    (First  anc? 

Second  Series.)     New  York,  1865. 
J.  II.  Newm.\n.     The  Idea  of  a  University.    London,  1873. 
Notes  and  Queries.    London,  1853. 
Ernest  Renan.    De  VOrigine  du  Langage.    Paris,  1864. 
W.  T.  Shedd.    Homiletics  and  Pastoral  Theology.     New  York,  1867. 
Archde.\con   Smith.     Common  Words  with  Curious  Derivations. 

London,  1865. 
John  Stoddard.    The  Philosophy  of  Language.    London,  1854. 
William  Thomson.    Outline  of  the  Necessary  Laws  of  Tlwught. 

London,  1857. 
John  Houne  Tooke.     The  Diversions  of  Purley.    London,  1860. 
Richard  Chenevix  Trench.    On  the  Study  of  Words.    London, 

1869. 
"        English,  Past  and  Present.    6th  ed.    London,  1868. 
"        Select  Glossary  of  English  Words.    3d  ed.   London,  1865. 
Richard  Whately.    Elements  of  Logic.    New  York,  1865. 

"  Elements  of  Rhetoric.     New  York,  1866. 

Hensleigh  Wedgwood.    Etymological  Dictionary.    Loudon,  1872. 
W.  D.  Whitney.     Language  and  the  Study  of  Language.     New 

York,  1867. 
"  The  Life  and  Groicth  of  Language.    New  York, 

1875. 
E.  P.  Whipple.    Essays  and  Reviews.    Boston,  1856. 
"  LJterature  and  Life.    Boston,  1871. 

Essays  by  a  Barrister.    London,  1863. 


INDEX. 


abdicate  and  desert,  282. 

abonii liable,  892. 

accord,  4()7. 

a  coiiliniicd  invalid,  4.'")r). 

Addington,  nicknaincd  liv  Sheri- 
dan, 3G1. 

AdiiUamites,  3()2. 

agriculturalist,  445. 

alert.  895. 

Alexander,  Addison,  D.D.,  his 
lines  on  small  words,  157. 

alligator,  887. 

all  of  thein,  459. 

all  right,  72. 

almost,  4()4. 

alms,  419. 

alone,  448. 

American  orators,  tiieir  diffiise- 
iK'ss,  179-181;  their  exaggera- 
tion, 185. 

Americans,  spendthrifts  of  lan- 
guage, 179;  their  exaggeration, 
184,  187. 

Amphibolous  sentences,  291. 

and,  285. 

anecdote,  378. 

Animals,  cannot  generalize,  or 
designate  things  by  signs,  1-3. 

an  innumerable  number,  405. 

animosity,  884. 

antecedents,  430. 

anyhow,  44(5. 

apology,  271. 

apple-pie  order,  402. 

appreciates,  455. 

Aristotle,  on  frigidity  of  stvle, 
117. 

Armstrong,  338. 

Arnold,  Dr.  Thoma*,  on  the 
.styles  of  historians,  65,  (iO. 

artesian,  408. 

artillery,  379. 

assassin,  89C. 


astonish,  376. 
atom,  820. 
at  all,  449. 
atte,  at,  831. 
attraction,  84. 
av(K"ation,  448. 


Bacon,    Lord,    his    command    of 

language,  10:  on  the  power  of 

words,  84,  85. 
Bailey,    Samuel,     on     Berkeley's 

theory  of  vision,  16. 
balance,  116,  448. 
Balzac,  on  the  witchery  of  words, 

85. 
banister,  437. 
bankrupt,  387. 
Barrow,    Isaac,    D.D.,   his   word- 

coiniugs.  488. 
bedlam,  418. 
belfrv,  416. 

Bentley,  Richard,  D.D.,  236,  241. 
her<j,  32. 
bib,  404. 
bid,  470. 
bishoj),  415. 
bit,  887. 

bitter  end,  the,  403, 
blackguards,  878. 
blanket,  409. 
blue-stocking,  390. 
blunderl)uss,  397. 
I5oileau,  quoted.  111,  214. 
BolingbroKe,  Lord,   his  attention 

to  his  style,  441. 
boml)ast,  379. 
bonJwmme,  71. 
boobv,  896. 
bosh"  897. 

Botanv,  its  nomenclature,  89. 
Ijoudoir,  4(M). 
liound,  455. 
Boweii,  Prof.  Francis,  on  a  fallacy 


481 


482 


INDEX. 


of  Diirwin's,  277;  on  second 
cjuises,  270. 

ItiHii-now,  414. 

I)iiit.  ;58:3. 

ln'avery,  377. 

I»i-i)\vii,  John,  liis  moderation  of 
ljin.y:uage.  191. 

IJiowno,  Sir  Thomas,  on  scholars, 
(). 

Buckle,  on  the  dialect  of  English 
scholars,  241. 

l)iilfoon,  :589. 

Dulwer,  Lytton,  on  the  power  of 
words,  93;  on  children's  names, 
324. 

bumper,  394. 

Bunsen,  on  poetry,  248. 

Bun-,  Aaron,  saying  of,  182. 

but,  445. 

but  that,  449. 

by-laws,  395. 

Byron,  Lord,  on  Keats's  death, 
90;  his  denunciation  of  the 
English  Language.  133,  134; 
his  use  of  monosyllables,  152, 
153;  hissubscri[)tion  for  Greece, 
160;  on  the  inadequacy  of  lan- 
guage, 212. 


C:esar,  885. 

caitiff,  379. 

caloric,  293. 

canard,  391. 

Canning,  George,  his  command 
of  words,  18;  extract  from,  200. 

canon,  cannon,  396. 

Cant,  political,  168;  ethical,  169; 
Seneca's.  169;  religious.  170- 
173;  Sjiurgeon  on,  172;  in  art, 
176;  etymology  of  the  word, 
389,  390. 

caption,  467. 

Capuchin,  355. 

carat,  405. 

Carbo.  anecdote  of,  29. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  satirized  by  an 
aiu'tioneer,  120. 

carnival,  458. 

caucus,  401. 

causewav,  419. 


ceiling,  417. 

celebrity,  451. 

chaffer,' 385. 

chagrin.  396. 

Chalmers,  Thomas,  D.D.,  on  Jolm 
Foster,  27;  liis  dispute  with 
Stuart,  264. 

Ciiarles  V,  saying  of,  177. 

Chatliam,  Lord,  iiis  study  of 
words,  17;  his  words,  52,  63; 
his  speeches,  182. 

cheat,  398. 

Chesterfield,  Lord,  anecdote  of, 
128;  his  efforts  to  improve  his 
language,  440. 

chevalier  d'indusfrie,  95. 

Choate,  Rufus,  on  the  diction 
suitable  to  lawyers,  18;  his 
prodigality  of  words,  187. 

Christian,  356,  357. 

Cicero,  his  choice  of  words,  29; 
his  word-coining,  105. 

civilization,  274. 

C'larendon,  Lord,  his  solecisms, 
438. 

cleave,  421. 

Climate,  its  effects  on  language, 
243,  244, 

Cobbett,  William,  his  mastery  of 
narration  and  invectiye,  236; 
his  nicknames  of  Peel,  Stanley, 
and  others,  352. 

cock,  244. 

Coke,  Sir  Edward,  his  character- 
ization of  Raleigh,  53. 

Coleridge,  Hartley  N.,  his  char- 
acterization of  the  Greek  and 
Latin  languages,  74;  his  lines 
on  speech,  193. 

Ccneridge,  S.  T,,  on  Shakespeare's 
language,  7;  his  witchery  of 
phrase,  9;  on  the  study  of  the 
Bible,  115;  on  religious  cant, 
171;  his  word-coinings,  432, 
433;  on  Youth  and  Age.  256. 

Collins.  William,  lines  from,  152. 

Comiie,  Dr.  Andrew,  on  Cowpcr's 
and  Will ler force's  letters,   165. 

conimercc.  114. 

Common  Improprieties  of  Speech, 
434-477. 


INDEX. 


4^:i 


community,  468. 

compulsory,  275. 

concede,  ;381. 

condign,  464. 

conduct,  454. 

constable,  404. 

convene,  449. 

Conversation,  religious  defined, 
173. 

convivium,  75. 

Cooper,  Sir  Astley,  anecdote  of, 
73. 

coquet,  380. 

corporeal,  446. 

corpse,  380. 

Corvvin,  Thomas,  Gov.,  133. 

Council  of  Basle,  363. 

country-dance,  415. 

couple,  463. 

Courier,  P.  L.,  on  abusive  epi- 
tiiots,  279. 

court,  405,  406. 

Couthon,  168. 

Cowper,  William,  his  translation 
of  Homer,  36;  his  poetry,  165; 
his  letters,  165. 

craft,  383. 

Craik,  Prof.,  on  the  revivifica- 
tion of  human  speech,  57. 

crawfish,  416. 

creative,  290,  291. 

Crockett,  David,  anecdote  of,  15. 

Crowe,  W.,  lines  from,  252. 

crushed  out,  449. 

cunning,  384. 

cur,  405. 

Curiosities  of  Language,  367-423. 

cunnudgeon,  397. 

Curran,  his  encounter  with  a  fish- 
wonuin,  365. 

Currcr  Bell,  her  "Villette "'  crit- 
icised, 126. 

Cuvier,  anecdote  of,  15. 


dandelion,  415. 
dangerous.  461. 
Daulc,  his  language,  9. 
dare,  470. 

Darwin,    Charles,    Jiis    fallacious 
use  of  "  tend,"  377- 


deceiving,  452, 

decimated,  115. 

deduction,  445. 

defalcati(jn,  385. 

delinquents,  347. 

De  Maistre,  Count  Joseph,  on 
Locke,  276;  on  Pagan  ideas  of 
lioliness  and  sin,  8L 

De  Medicis,  Catherine,  sayings  of, 
178. 

Demosthenes,  his  choice  of  words, 
28,  29;  his  speeches.  181,  182;  his 
ignorance  of  foreign  tongues, 
and  study  of  Thucydides,  239. 

demure,  383. 

De  Quincey,  his  mastery  of  words, 
13;  on  translation,  32;  on  the 
word  "humbug,"  81,  82;  on 
Cardinal  Mezzofanti,  178;  on 
the  French  language  of  jias- 
sion,  189;  on  the  choice  of  Sax- 
on or  Romanic  woids,  195,  19(i, 
201 ;  on  tlie  inadequacy  of  lan- 
guage, 212;  on  the  style  of 
wonuMi's  letters,  240,  241 ;  say- 
ing of,  319;  on  improprieties 
of  speech,  439. 

Denmark,  ca])ture  of  her  fleet  by 
llic  Britisii,  304,  305. 

Disbrosses,  en  Roman  liereditary 
names,  327. 

dexterity.  388. 

'•  Dick  Swiveiler  style,"  1C4. 

dill'er  with,  different  to,  446. 

directly,  456. 

Disraeli,  Benjamin,  quoted.  363. 

distinguish,  470. 

do,  467. 

doing  good,  307-309. 

chjllar,  404. 

Domenech,  the  Abbe,  on  tiie  lan- 
guage of  savages,  34.  35. 

Dominicans,  355. 

don't,  451. 

dormouse,  416. 

"  Double  Processiim."  the,  contro- 
versy concerning  it,  262. 

doubt,  447. 

drive,  469. 

Dryden,  .John,  his  scientific  lan- 
guage,   10;    his    tran-lalioii    of 


•184 


INDEX. 


the   "yEneid,"  36;  his  version 

of  "  Panulit^e  Lost,"  37,  38;  his 

inodeniiziitioii  of  Cliaucor,  37; 

lines  from,   251 ;    Willmott  on 

his  versification,  253. 
dun,  408,  431. 
r  hi  nee.  380,  387. 
Dii  Ponceau,  on  the  inadequacy 

of  lanjjjuage,  212. 
Dver,  lines  from  his   "  Kuins  of 

Rome,"  249. 


Easter,  40G. 

education,  280-283. 

effluvium,  457. 

egregious,  401. 

either,  452,  453. 

either  alternative,  460. 

electricity,  293. 

Eloquence,  uses  simple  language, 
124,  125. 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  on  Montaigne's 
words,  10;  on  Shakespeare's 
suggestiveness,  55 ;  on  oratorv, 
123. 

English  Bible,  richness  of  its  vo- 
cabulary, 204;  F.  W.  Paber 
on,  204. 

English  Language,  few  of  its 
words  in  common  use,  51,  58; 
its  copiousness,  132-138;  de- 
cried by  Charles  V,  Madame  de 
Stael  and  Byron,  133;  Addison 
and  Waller  on,  134;  its  compos- 
ite' character,  135,  136;  its  ir- 
regularities, 137;  illustrations 
of  its  monosyllabic  character, 
147-157;  its  capabilities,  214, 
215. 

English  Literature,  its  looseness 
of  diction,  425. 

English  race,  its  intolerance  of 
restraints,  425. 

Ennius,  saying  of,  177. 

enthuse,  467. 

equally  as  well,  456. 

equanimity  of  mind,  451. 

Erskine,  Lord,  his  masterv  of 
English,  236. 

ether,  293. 


Etymological  knowledge,  its  value 
in  the  use  of  words,  231-234. 

Etymology,  rules  of,  413;  errors 
based  on,  285-289. 

Euripides,  on  character,  54. 

every,  404. 

evidence,  449. 

Exaggeration  of  language,  184- 
193;  F.  W.  Robinson  on,  191. 

except,  463. 

excessively,  452. 

excluHpier,  400. 

exorbitant,  381. 

experience,  200,  207. 

Expletives,  90,  91. 

extend,  403. 


faint,  388. 

Fallacies  in  Words,  257-322. 

farce,  392. 

farther.  450. 

fast,  420. 

fatherland.  429. 

Federalist,  347. 

fellow,  380. 

fellow  countrymen,  470. 

female,  114. 

final  completion,  450. 

Fitz,  witz,  and  nkij,  329. 

folks,  468. 

Fortescue,  337. 

Foster,  John,  on  the  words  of  a 
man  of  genius,  6 ;  on  eloqueuce, 
122. 

Fox,  C.  J.,  on  Pitt's  words,  26; 
his  eloquence,  52. 

Frank,  407. 

Franklin,  Dr.  Benjamin,  his  style, 
236. 

Freeman,  Dr.  E.  A.,  on  the  Eng- 
lish Language,  118. 

freemason,  415. 

French  Academy,  the.  431. 

French  language,  its  lack  of  words 
for  "bribe,"  "sober,"  "listen- 
er," "home,"  etc.,  70-72. 

French  Literature,  its  method 
and  lucidity.  426. 

Frenchmen,  their  distaste  for  for- 
eign words,  126,  127. 


INDEX. 


485 


from  thence,  from  whence,  454. 

Frondvurs,  350. 

frontispiece,  414. 

FuIUt,  Dr.  Thomas,  on  the  Ital- 
liin  !Ui(l  Swiss  lan,2;uages,  76; 
on  hiyh-nown  lanj::uage,  12!J; 
on  "ah!  "and  '"lia!"  14:];  on 
the  schoohneii,  317;  liis  ety- 
mologies, 414;  his  story  of 
Jolin  Cuts,  339. 

fur,  <J5. 


Garrick,  David,  saying  of,  146. 

Gautier,  Theophile,  his  study  of 
words,  19. 

gene,  71. 

gentleman,  97-99. 

George  I,  of  England,  IGG. 

Gesticulation,  its  expressiveness, 
19-21. 

gibberish,  394,  408. 

Gil^bon,  Edward,  his  historical 
insinuations  and  suppressions, 
292. 

girl,  378. 

go  aiiead,  72. 

Goethe,  saying  of,  34;  lines  from, 
215;  on  study  of  foreign 
tongues,  229;  a  poor  linguist, 
238. 

Goldsmith,  Oliver,  his  solecisms, 
438,  439. 

gooseberry,  414. 

gossip,  385. 

Gothic,  84. 

Greek  and  Latin,  contrasted,  74; 
a  knowledge  of  them  not  neces- 
sary to  the  command  of  Eng- 
lish, 229-241;  their  vahie  tor 
culture,  230,  231. 

Greek,  its  subtle  distinctions, 
34. 

Greek  words,  Roman  affectation 
for,  127. 

Gre('ks,tlieir  pervei'sions  of  words, 
9(5;  tlieir  ignorance  of  grammar 
and  etymology,  238. 

greet,  greeting,  450. 

Gregory  VII,  Pope,  167. 

Guelphs  and  Ghiuellines,  358. 


gutted.  430. 
gypsies,  418. 

H. 

habcrdaslier,  397. 

liack.  405. 

iiad  liavo,  435,  450. 

luul  ought,  450. 

Halifax,  Lord,  on  trimming.  359. 

Hall,  Koijert.  D.D.,  anecdotes  of, 
20,  173;  on  his  aping  of  John- 
son, 281 ;  on  Saxon-English, 
205. 

Halleck,  Fitz-Greenc,  his  anec- 
dote of  a  Scotch  girl,  129. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  liis  legal 
arguments,  182. 

Hamilton,  "Single  Speech,"  360. 

Hamilton,  Sir  William, on  certain 
p]iilosoi)hical  terms,  285. 

Handel,  saving  of,  133. 

handkerchief,  404. 

harden,  301,  302. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  on  the 
spells  in  words,  47. 

hawk,  398. 

llaydon,  anecdote  of,  85. 

Ilazlitt,  William,  on  words.  4; 
his  "  Tiddydoll  "  storv,  364. 

helter-skelter,  388. 

Herder,  his  nickname  of  Goethe, 
348. 

hermetically,  409. 

Higginson,  T.  W.,  on  words,  4, 
46. 

hip,  hip,  hurrah !  388. 

Historians,  their  characters  shown 
by  their  styles,  65. 

hoax,  397. 

Hobbes.  his  language,  316;  on 
words,  316,  317. 

hocus  pocus,  396. 

llollinshed,  his  "  Chronicles  " 
quoted.  286. 

Homer,  his  "winged  words,"  5; 
his  onomatopceia.  254. 

"  Homoousians  "  and  "llomoiu- 
sians."  262. 

homo,  320. 

honnftete,  71. 

Home  Tooke,  saying  of,  155. 


480 


INDEX. 


JiorrrMit.  :3T5. 

liospitiil,  :3l:5. 

host,  4()r). 

Iiow,  456. 

Ilusuenol.  393,  394. 

Iimiible-pie,  398. 

Imnibug.  82,  395. 

Hume.  Diivid,  98,  99;  his  .irfru- 
meiit  against  miracles.  205-270; 
iiis  history  of  Englaml,  292;  on 
the  term  "delinquents,"  347. 

humility,  81. 

hung,  470. 

liypocrite,  402. 


idiot,  383. 

1  have  got,  445. 

imagination,  234. 

imljecile,  39G. 

imbroglio,  115. 

Imitation,  in  literature,  218,  222. 

imp,  383. 

impertinent,  271. 

in,  470. 

inaugurate.  114. 

incomprehensible,  272. 

incorrect  orthography,  456. 

indices,  463. 

individual,  109. 

ing,  334. 

in  our  midst,  452. 

instances,  377. 

Interjections,  141-146;  Home 
Tooke  on,  141 ;  Max  Muller  on, 
143;  Whitefield's,  146;  Shake- 
speare's, 146;  Greek  and  Latin, 
147. 

intoxicated,  116,  117. 

inveterate,  423. 

is.  466. 

island,  414. 

Italian  language,  76;  its  debase- 
ment, 76-79.^ 

its,  430. 

it  were,  447. 


jacket.  409. 

Jansenists,  their  disputes  with  the 
Jesuits,  261. 


Jeffrey.  Francis,  his  artificial 
style,  119;  anecdote    of,  119. 

jcopanlize,  461. 

JerusaliMn  articlioke,  415. 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  his  grand- 
iose style,  156;  anecdote  of,  112; 
his  Johnsonese  dialect,  112,113; 
satirized  by  Dr.  Wolcott,  113; 
sayings  of,  123,  168;  his  spoken 
and  written  language  contrast- 
ed, 206,  207;  his  advice  on 
style,  215;  on  imitative  har- 
mony, 255;  on  Mrs.  Barbauld's 
name.343;  hiscare  of  his  speech, 
441 ;  improprieties  in  his  "Ram- 
bler,*' 442;  his  nickname  of  a 
fishwoman.  365. 

Johnson.  Edward,  M.  D.,  on 
"right,"  287. 

jolly,  375. 

Joubert,on  Rousseau's  words,  10; 
his  verbal  economy,  183. 

jour,  247. 

K. 

Keats,    John,    his    love   of    fine 

phrases,  18. 
kennel,  402. 
kidnap,  398. 
Am,  334. 
King,  T.  Starr,  on  the  mvsteryof 

style,  30. 
knave,  384. 

L. 

lady.  391. 

landed  proprietor,  84,  273. 

Landor,  W.  S.,  on  fine  words,  111; 
lines  from,  154. 

Language,  its  value  to  man,  2.  3, 
21;  its  power,  5,  6;  not  indis- 
pensable to  thought  and  its 
expression.  19-21 ;  elaborated 
by  successive  generations,  21; 
abbreviates  the  processes  and 
preserves  the  results  of  thought. 
22,  23;  its  educational  value. 
23;  the  limit  of  thought,  23;  of 
savages,  24.  25 ;  not  the  dress  of 
thought,  35;  unity  of  language 
essential  to  national  unity,  47, 


INDEX. 


487 


48,  50 :  gains  by  time  and  cul- 
ture, 56 ;  no  new  additions  to, 
50;  formed  out  of  twenty  ele- 
mentary sounds,  CO;  an  index- 
to  individual  ciiaracter.  02-07; 
an  index  to  national  character, 
67-82;  how  enriched  and  ini- 
poverish(;d,  67,  08:  debasement 
of  the  Italian.  08-70;  the  Greek 
and  the  Latin  cliaracterized, 
73-75;  reveals  the  climate  of  a 
country,  75,  70;  the  Italian 
contrasted  with  the  Swiss,  70; 
its  influence  on  opinion,  83;  its 
lubricity,  95;  mischiefs  caused 
by  its  debasement,  101 ;  bar- 
barized by  fineries  of  style.  122; 
of  art  and  science,  129-131 ;  ex- 
pressiveness of  the  Englisii. 
132-138;  transcendental,  210; 
inadequate  for  the  expression  of 
thought,  211;  obscure  caused 
by  obscurity  of  thought.  214, 
215;  its  virtues  moral,  221;  its 
suggestive  power.  222;  Goidwin 
Smith  on,  222;  its  magical  ef- 
fects, 224,  225;  stamped  witii 
local  influences,  243,  244;  an 
imperfect  vehicle  of  thouglit, 
317;  Emerson  on,  369;  contains 
the  history  of  nations,  370;  mir- 
rors the  tastes,  customs  and 
opinions  of  a  people.  374;  of 
savages,  410-412;  over-nicety 
in  its  use,  427;  is  living  and  or- 
ganic, 428;  is  ever  growing, 
428;  defies  all  shackles,  429; 
Henry  Rogers  on,  433;  how  to 
use  it  well,  440. 

Languages,  of  conquered  peoples 
not  easily  extirpated.  48-50; 
the  studv  of  foreign,  50,  239. 

Lavoisier,  liis  chemical  terminolo- 
gy. 15. 

least,  454. 

leave.  458. 

Les  Gueulx,  357. 

less,  440. 

let,  420. 

Lewes,  G.  IL,  on  frankness,  158, 

lie,  lay,  447. 


lieutenant.  414. 

light.  14.  302. 

like  1  did,  447. 

likewise.  448. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  anecdote  of, 

363. 
Literature,  effete,  103. 
Locke,  John,  his   "Essay  on  the 

Human  Understanding,"  270. 
London.  312.  313. 
looks  i)eautifullv,  457. 
£.  s.  d.,  387. 
Louis  XIV,  167. 
Lower,    Mark   A.,    quoted,    829; 

anecdotes  by,  330.  333;   on  the 

origin     of     certain     historical 

names,  337,  338. 
lust,  385. 

Luttrell.  Ilenrv,  lines  bv,  107. 
luxury,  295-298. 

M. 

Macaulay,  T.  B.,  on  Milton's 
words,  7,  8;  on  Dryden's,  10; 
on  Johnson's  langiuige,  200:  his 
eulogy  on  Saxon-English.  200; 
quoted,  84.  240;  on  disputes  in 
Parliament  concerning  James 
II  and  William,  282. 

Macreadv,  W.  C,  his  elocution, 
53. 

nuilignants.  347. 

manumit.  402. 

.Marsh.  Prof.  G.  T.,  on  Dcmos- 
tiienes,  29;  on  the  Italian  lan- 
guage. 09,  70;  on  Goethe  as  a 
linguist,  238. 

Martineau.  James,  D.D.,  on 
words,  103. 

martinet.  409. 

^laterialism,  derives  no  support 
from  language,  288,  289. 

maudlin,  408. 

megrim,  419. 

menial.  382. 

Methodist.  355. 

Mczzofanti.  Cardinal.  177,  178. 

Michaelis,  J.  I).,  remarks  of.  79. 

Mill.  J.  S.,  tin  the  misuse  of  cer- 
tain words,  273. 

Miller.  Hugh,  his  style,  238. 


488 


INDEX. 


Milton,  the  suggr^stiveness  of  his 
verse,  7,  8;  Macaulay  on  his 
words,  7,  8;  his  versification,  li; 
his  necromantic  power  over  lan- 
guage, 9;  his  use  of  monosylla- 
I)les.  151;  his  use  of  words  in 
their  etymological  sense,  SiW, 
375,  376";  his  prose  style,  241 ; 
extracts  from  his  "Paradise 
Lost,"  250,  251,  253,  254;  from 
"II  Penseroso"  and  "  L'Al- 
legro,"  253. 

]\Iirabcau,  his  words,  3. 

miscreant,  380. 

mistaken,  421. 

money,  259. 

mongrel,  405. 

monomania,  94. 

Monosyllables,  their  potency  in 
life  and  literature,  140;  how 
constructed  in  English,  148; 
their  number  in  English,  156. 

Montaigne,  on  verbal  definitions 
and  explanations,  310. 

Montgomery,  James,  on  Milton's 
versification,  8,  9. 

Moon-Alford  controversy,  the, 
424. 

Moore,  Thomas,  anecdote  of,  27; 
verses  of,  153;  saying  of,  240. 

more  perfect,  465. 

Morris,  Gouverneur,  anecdote  by, 
87,  88. 

Motley,  J.  L.,  on  "The  Beggars," 
357. 

mountebank,  388, 

Miiller,  Max,  on  "  The  Supernat- 
ural," and  "To  Know  and  To 
Believe,"  264;  on  etymology, 
413. 

murder,  303,  304. 

muriatic  acid.  293. 

musket,  232,  248. 

mussulmen,  469. 

mutual,  462. 

myself,  458. 

mystery,  406. 

N. 
Names,  of  children,  323-325,  343, 
344;  of  things,  once  names  of 


persons,  408;  of  places  —  how 
corrupted,  417,  41H. 

Names  of  Men,  323-344;  how 
ix'garded  by  the  Jews  and  the 
Romans,  43,  45;  their  sugges- 
tiveness,  325;  all  originally  sig- 
nificant, 326:  Roman,  327; 
surnames,  328;  Saxon,  334; 
obsolete  words  preserved  in, 
332;  ending  in  er,  .332;  ending 
in  ward,  332;  derived  from  of- 
fices, 332;  disguised,  denoting 
mean  occufjations,  333;  from 
personal  qualities,  334;  Puri- 
tan, 334;  derived  from  oatlis, 
334;  indicating  personal  blem- 
ishes or  moral  obliquities,  335, 
336:  some  changes  of,  336, 
339;  "  P]rasmus "  and  "  Melan- 
chthon,"  336;  cori-uption  of, 
336, 337;  queer  conjunctions  of, 
.339;  that  harmonize  with,  or 
are  antagonistic  to,  their  own- 
ers' occupations,  339-341 ;  puns 
upon,  341-343 ;  not  mere  labels, 
346 ;  Goethe  on,  346 ;  their  influ- 
ence on  their  wearers,  346. 

Napier,  extract  from  his  History 
of  the  Peninsular  War,  201, 

Napoleon,  his  love  of  glory,  64, 
65 ;  his  hvpocrisy,  168 ;  his  stvle, 
222;  on  epithets,  350. 

naturalist,  378. 

nature  and  art,  298. 

nature  and  law  of  nature,  269, 270. 

nervous,  420. 

never,  453. 

Newman,  Prof.  J.  H.,  verses  by, 
174. 

nice,  394,  461. 

Nicknames,  345-366;  their  influ- 
ence in  controversv,  346 :  Goe- 
the on,  346,  348;  of  Van  Buren, 
Tvler,  Gen,  Scott  and  Bona- 
parte, 348,  349;    whv  effective, 

350.  351:  theological,  351; 
loving,  351 ;    Cobbett's  skill  in, 

351,  352:  Carlyle's,  352 ;  mean- 
ingless, 352:  their  origin.  352- 
354;  felicitous,  354:  fondness 
of  the  Italians  for  them,  354, 


INDEX. 


48'J 


359;  memorable  English,  3G0- 
363 ;  originally  complimentary, 
363;  Southey's  "Doctor  Dove" 
on,  364, 

no,  455. 

none,  457. 

notwithstanding,  470. 

numerous,  470. 

O. 

ock,  334. 

O'Conncll,  Daniel,  his  "Lax 
Weir"  case,  16;  his  stock 
phrases,  168. 

off  of,  465. 

oh!  142. 

old,  280. 

older.  468. 

O,  Mar,  and  Ap,  328,  329,  330. 

Onoinatopcs,  242-256;  objections 
to  the  theory  of,  245-247;  why 
they  vary  in  different  languages, 
246;  their  expressiveness,  248, 
255;  abound  in  poetry,  248;  ex- 
amples of  in  English  poetry, 
249-254;  Homer's,  Virgil's  anil 
Aristophanes's,  254;  Dr.  .Joim- 
son  on,  255;  no  rules  for  their 
choice,  255. 

on  to,  467. 

opposite  and  contrarv,  284. 

or,  285. 

Oratory,  an  important  law  of,  190. 

originality,  290. 

ostracize,  371. 

ovation,  117. 

overflow,  468. 

owl.  399. 

oxygen,  293. 


pagan.  371.  372. 

palace,  405. 

palfrev,  405. 

palsy,"  419. 

rambos,  anecdote  of,  174. 

panilor,  409. 

pantaloon,  398. 

pantheist.  276. 

[.aradisf.  ;{H2. 

Iiurii|)h(  rnalia.  -164. 


parasite,  399. 

parliament,  272. 

parlor,  400. 

parson.  385. 

partake,  437. 

parts,  380. 

party,  451. 

rascal,  quoted.  111. 

pasquinade,  409. 

I'atkul,  and  Charles  XII. 

}iensive,  394. 

people,  465. 

person,  283,  397. 

personaltv,  467. 

pet,  396.  " 

tietrels,  396. 
'hidias,  saying  of,  223. 

Philologists,  their  dangers,  412. 

rhilli[)s,  his  "World  of  Words," 
429. 

Pinknev,  William,  his  study  of 
words,  17,  18. 

Pitt.  C'hristo[)her,  lines  by,  250. 

plagiarism.  400. 

Plantagenet,  338. 

I)lentv.  445. 

Poetrv.  English,  of  the  18th  cen- 
ttiry,  l(i3-165. 

policy,  414. 

Political  economists,  their  dis- 
putes, 259,  260. 

poltroon.  392. 

pontiir,  406. 

Pope,  Alexander,  his  translation 
of  Homer,  35,  36;  sjiying  of, 
53;  his  use  of  small  words.  139; 
his  circundocutions,  165;  lines 
from.  249.  252. 

Popes,  their  management  of  theo- 
logical controversies,  26^3. 

porpoise,  416. 

post,  420. 

Practical  men,  and  theorists,  305, 
307. 

Preachers,  their  use  of  philosophi- 
cal words.  109.  110. 

predicate,  451. 

premier,  35H. 

prevent,  378. 

preventative,  461. 

previous,  445. 


400 


INDEX. 


nriest,  203. 

I'roctor.     Adclaiilf.     on     words, 

2,  104. 
property,  390. 
prc)|)osition,  4o5. 
|ii'()\t'ii.  455. 
l)uneliial,  379. 
jmny,  407. 
Puritan,  359. 

Q. 

quakcr,  359. 
(piaiidary,  388. 
quantity.  458. 
ijuamquam,  389. 
quinsy,  419. 
Quirites,  85. 
quite,  457. 
quiz,  393. 


raising  the  rent,  471. 

rascal,  378. 

raven,  398. 

reasons,  97. 
.  recommend,  446. 

regeneration,  382. 

relevant,  381. 

rendition,  4G3. 

resent,  384. 

restive,  458. 

retaliate,  384,  423. 

revolt.  448. 

rhinoceros,  320. 

right,  287,  310,  398. 

ringleader,  232. 

rip,  422. 

Robertson,  Rev.  F.  W.,  on  cal- 
umny, 91,  92;  on  talk  without 
deeds,  173;  on  the  use  of  su- 
perlatives, 174,  175,  191,  192. 

Robinson,  "Bootjack,"  360. 

rodomontade,  410. 

Romanic  words  in  English,  197- 
201. 

Romans,  the,  degeneracy  of  their 
language.  75;  their  ideas  of 
virtue  and  vice,  81;  had  no 
idea  of  sin,  81. 

Roscius,  the  Roman  actor,  19. 

rosemary,  415. 


Rossini,  saying  of,  176. 
rostrum,  405. 
Roundliead,  360. 
Rump,  the,  360. 


sagacious.  378. 

Sainte-Beuve,  C.  A.,  on  Napo- 
leon's style,  222. 

salary,  398. 

salmon,  405.' 

Salutation,  its  forms  an  index  to 
national  character,  77-79. 

same,  290. 

sandwich,  409. 

sarcasm,  399. 

saunterer,  409. 

Savages,  no  ethical  nomenclatures 
in  their  languages,  80;  their 
poverty  of  language,  24.  25. 

Saxon-English,  its  merits  and 
defects,  196-197,  201-208;  the 
basis  of  the  language,  208;  its 
witcherv.  208 ;  its  obsolete  pic- 
torial words,  201 ;  Robert  Hall 
on,  205 ;  Macaulay  on,  206 ;  its 
freedom  from  equivocation, 
278. 

Saxon  Words,  or  Romanic?  194- 
209. 

scarcely,  468. 

Scarlett,  Sir  James,  on  brevity  in 
jury  addresses,  182. 

Schiller,  on  the  study  of  foreign 
languages,  239. 

Scholarship,  the  error  of  modern, 
178. 

schooner,  399,  400. 

Science,  influence  of  its  names 
and  phrases,  89. 

scrupulous.  400. 

second  causes,  270. 

secret.  376. 

Secret  of  Apt  Words,  the,  210- 
241. 

Selden,  John,  saying  of,  56. 

seldom,  or  never.  454. 

selfisimess,  81.  279. 

Seneca,  his  moral  discourses, 
169;  his  wealth,  169,  170;  his 
crimes,  170. 


INDtX. 


401 


seraphim.  405. 

servant,  400. 

servitude,  274. 

setting-i'ooni,  464. 

sexton,  388. 

shacklebone,  373. 

Shakespeare,   his  words,   7 ;  siij?- 

gestiveness  of  his  diction.    ')i. 

55;     not   a   classical     scholar, 

235;  quoted,  254. 
shall,  will,  471-477. 
Sharp,  Dr.,  saying  of,  173. 
Shenstone,   on   nielodv   of  style, 

255. 
Shibboleths,  their  influence  with 

the  people,  87-89. 
shoot,  416. 
Siddons,   Mrs.,   on    one   of   Ilay- 

don's  pictures.  85. 
Siilney.  Sir  Philip,  on  the  ballad 

of  "Chevy  Chase,'"  224;  saying 

of.  441. 
signing  one's  name,  404. 
silhouettes,  408. 
silly,  382. 
simple,  385. 
simplicity,  299. 
sincere,  367, 
sit,  sat,  454. 
slave,  400. 
Small     Words,     139-157;     when 

necessary,   156;   their  potency, 

140;  abound  in  English,  147.' 
Smith,  331. 

Smith,    Prof.    Goldwin,    on   lan- 
guage, 222. 
Smith,  Sydney,  saying  of,  20;  his 

word-coinings,      433;     ou     Sir 

James   Macintosh's   style,   118, 

119;  his  solecisms,  442. 
snob,  395. 
Solecisms,    in    eminent    writers, 

434,  437,  4:38.  442-444. 
solidarity.  430. 

Some  Abuses  of  Words,  177-193. 
somerset.  417. 
son,  327.  333. 
sophist.  271. 
South,   Robert.    D.D.,   on   verlial 

magic,  94,  275;   extract  from, 

184. 


S|)aniards,  their  love  for  long 
names,  127,  128,  :«9. 

"Spasmodic  School"  of  Poetry. 
362. 

specialty,  461, 

species, '300. 

speculation,  383. 

spencer,  409. 

Sjiencer,  Herbert,  on  Saxon-En- 
glish, 154. 

Spenser,  his  "Abode  of  Sleep," 
249. 

spoonsful,  468. 

Spurgeon,  Rev.  C.  II.,  fm  relig- 
ious cant,  172. 

squatter,  430. 

sfpiirrel,  399. 

Stanhope,  Lady  Hester,  319, 

Stanley,  Lord,  on  Saxon  words, 
194,'l95. 

starvation.  360. 

stentorian,  410. 

stipulation,  387. 

stopping,  462. 

Story,  .Judge  Joseph,  anecdote 
told  by,  312. 

Story,  W.  W.,  quoted,  199. 

stranger,  403. 

strong.  302. 

Style,  the  most  vital  element  of 
literary  immortality,  30;  liib- 
bon's  and  Hume's,  30;  Starr 
King  on  its  mystery.  30;  an 
index  to  character,  65;  intens- 
ity of  192:  the  transcenflental, 
210;  how  to  form  a  good,  215, 
216,  222,  225;  no  model,  217; 
varieties  of,  219;  .loiibi-rt  on, 
220,  221;  the  kind  demanded 
to-day.  220;  not  to  l>e  culti- 
vated for  its  own  sake,  221; 
images  tlie  writer's  nature, 
221  ;  Ruskin  on,  221 ;  a  (juestion 
concerning  it,  224;  perspicuity 
its  lirst  law,  225;  should  bo 
vivid,  225. 

succeed.  469. 

succession  powder,  90. 

such,45(). 

suffrage,  406. 

sunstroke,  293. 


402 


INDEX. 


supercilious.  400. 

superior,  457. 

supplement,  456. 

surname,  415. 

Swinburne,  A.  C,  his  command 

of  words,  11. 
sycophant,  39J). 
Synonyms,  26, 


tabbv.  399. 

t.ile."375. 

Tartar,  469. 

tawdi-v,  409. 

Taylor,  "  Chicken,"  362. 

Taylor,  Henry,  on  the  writers  of 
the  17th  century,  13-14. 

Taylor,  Jeremy,  his  latinistic 
style,  233. 

team,  313-316. 

telescope,  430. 

tend,  276. 

Tennyson,  his  command  of 
woi-ds,  11;  ids  use  of  onomato- 
poeia, 251,  252;  on  words,  212. 

terrier,  405. 

that  of,  470. 

the  above,  450. 

the  church,  262,  263. 

the  masses,  452. 

theory,  305. 

then,  450. 

Theological  disputes,  260-264. 

thing,  380. 

Thomson,  James,  his  list  of  ob- 
solete words,  57. 

TJiought,  difficulty  of  expressing 
it.  211. 

thrall,  thraldom,  403. 

tidy.  379. 

toad-eater,  389. 

to  a  degree.  456. 

to  allude.  459,  460. 

to  curry  favor,  418. 

to  extremely  maltreat,  467. 

Tooke,  Horne,  on  "truth,"  286, 
287. 

topsy-turvy,  388. 

Tory,  355." 

Townsend,  Lady,  on  Whitefield, 
173. 


Translations,  their  inadequacy, 
31-43;  of  the  New  Testament, 
32-34;  of  the  "  Iliad  "  and  the 
"  Odyssey,"  35,  36;  of  Horace, 
38;  blunilers  in,  39-41. 

transpire,  470. 

treacle,  419. 

tril)ulation,  399. 

trifling  minutia',  462. 

trivial,  392. 

True  Blue,  407. 

truth,  286,  289. 

try,  451. 

try  and,  469. 

two  good  ones,  471. 

tyrant,  271. 

U. 

ugly.  466. 

underhanded,  461. 

unity,  283. 

upon,  14. 

Usage,  a  jjresumptive  test  of  pur- 
ity of  speech,  434;  of  old  writ- 
ers, 435. 

usury,  380. 

Utopian,  88,  410. 


vagabond,  384. 

ventilate,  470. 

villain,  382. 

violation  of  nature.  267. 

Virgil,  his  "^neid,"  28;  his  ono- 
nuvtopoeia,  254. 

virtual  representation,  265. 

Vocabularies,  of  different  men 
and  callings,  66,  67. 

Vocal  Organs,  the.  theii'  adapta- 
tion to  the  atmosphere,  60. 

volcano,  409. 

W. 

Walton,  Izaak,  his  style,  236. 
was.  471. 

watched  him  do  it,  457. 
we,  161,  162. 
wealth,  390. 
wearies,  446. 

Webster.  Daniid,  his  study  of 
words,    17;    the  impressivenes* 


INDEX. 


493 


of  his  words,  52;  his  early 
speeches  bombastie,  124;  his 
use  of  plain  words,  124;  his 
temperance  of  language,  192. 

Wellington,  on  his  '"duly."  64. 

Whately,  Archbishop,  his  sim- 
plicity in  preaching,  123. 

whether,  453. 

Whipple,  E.  P.,  on  the  words  of 
Chaucer,  Edwards,  and  Barrow, 
54;  on  the  suggcstiveness  of 
Shakespeare's  diction,  54,  55; 
on  the  styles  of  Sydney  Smith, 
Bacon,  Locke,  etc.,  219,  220; 
his  style,  237;  his  knowledge  of 
English  literature,  237. 

Whitney,  W.  D.,  quoted,  234. 

Whittington  and  his  cat,  417. 

whole,  entire,  complete,  total, 
4G0.  469. 

William,  326. 

Willmott,  Rev.  Robert  A.,  on 
Dryden's  and  Pope's  versifica- 
tion, 253. 

window,  404. 

wiseacre,  414. 

wit,  380. 

Wolcott,  Dr.,  his  lines  on  John- 
son, 113. 

woman,  391. 

women,  their  language,  240. 

Words,  their  significance,  1-61; 
their  range  and  power,  2,  46; 
are  things,  3;  Mirabeau  on,  3; 
Hazlitt  on,  3;  more  enduring 
than  sculpture  or  painting.  4, 
5;  Homers,  5;  the  mcarnation 
of  thought,  6;  Milton's,  7-9; 
Montgomery  on  Milton's,  8,  9; 
Bacon's,  10;  Dryden's,  10;  Mon- 
taigne's, 10;  Rousseau's,  10; 
Coleridge's,  10;  Tennyson's,  11; 
Swinburne's,  11;  De  Quincey's 
mastery  "of  them,  12;  of  the 
17th  century  writers,  13;  difii- 
culty  of  defining,  14-16;  Daniel 
Webster's  study  of,  17;  Lord 
Chatham's  study  of,  17;  Will- 
iam Pinkney's  study  of,  17; 
Theophile  Gautier's  fondness 
for  picturesijue,  19;  comprehen- 


sive, 23;  their  use  a  test  of 
culture,  25,  26;  sliould  fit  close 
to  the  thought,  26;  never  strict- 
ly synimymous,  26  ;  Wm.  Pitt's 
use  of,  96;  Robert  Hall's  use 
of,  26;  John  Foster's  scrutiny 
of.  27 ;  Thomas  Moore's  use  of, 
27;  how  used  by  the  ancient 
writers,  27-30;  Demosthcnes's 
choice  of,  28,  29;  Cicero's  use 
of,  29;  Cowper  on,  34;  their 
necromantic  power,  34,  35:  how 
regarded  by  the  ancients,  43- 
45;  use  of  in  ''the  black  art,'' 
45;  T.  W.  Higginson  on,  46; 
Prof,  Maurice  un,  46;  Haw- 
thorne on  their  spells,  47;  their 
meaning  and  force  depend  up- 
on the  man  who  uses  them,  50- 
56;  E.  P.  Whipple  on  the  trans- 
figuration of  conuiiun,  54:  siig- 
gestivenessof  Sliakespearc's,  54, 
55;  media  for  the  emission  of 
character,  55,  56;  no  new  ones 
can  be  invented,  56,  57;  difti- 
eulty  of  restoring  obsolete,  57; 
their  significance  disclosed  by 
life,  59,  60;  their  morality,  62- 
104;  an  index  to  character,  62- 
104;  their  power  over  tlie  pop- 
ular imagination,  82;  test  of 
thought,  82;  embalm  mistaken 
opinions,  84;  Bacon  on  their 
power,  84;  Balzac  on  their 
witchery,  85;  South  on  the  en- 
chantment of  popular  ones, 
85,  86,  87;  illustrationsof  tlieir 
power,  86,  87:  tlieir  influence 
in  theology.  88,  89;  their  influ- 
ence in  science,  89;  their  influ- 
ence upon  authors,  90;  em- 
ployed as  expletives,  90;  calum- 
niuus,92;  their  jx'Wer  in  politics, 
93:  Bulwer  on  their  influence, 
93;  their  perversions  by  the 
Greeks  and  Romans,  96;  used 
to  gloss  over  vices,  99,  10<); 
auctioneers'  use  of,  100;  crimi- 
nality of  their  corruptors,  101, 
102;  James  Marlineau  on,  103; 
a   startling    fact   about    lliem, 


494 


INDEX. 


104:  prand.  10r)-in8;  t ho  mania 
for  bif?,  100-108;  St.  Paul  on, 
10!):  thc'siinpli'sllK'st,  124;  tlic 
alTectation  ol'  forpigii,  12r),  120; 
uncouthncss  of  scientifif,  i;50, 
131;  small,  i;}0-157;  fonvcii- 
tional,  158,  100,  172:  used  witli- 
out  meaning,  102-1  TO;  lose  their 
signitieance  by  handling,  170, 
171.  190;  some  abases  of,  177- 
19;3;  the  secret  of  apt,  210-241 ; 
only  symbols,  213;  their  ar- 
rangement on  the  battle-fields 
of  thought,  220,  228;  onomato- 
)H)etic,  242-250;  phonetic  cor- 
ruption of,  247;  fallacies  in, 
257-322;  effect  of  equivocal  in 
theology,  257-204;  and  in  phil- 
osopliy,  204;  their  changes  of 
meaning,  271 ;  dictionary  defi- 
nitions of,  275;  "  rabble-charm- 
ing," 275;  question-begging, 
279;  derivative  and  primitive, 
280;  mere  hieroglyphics,  288; 
shadow  forth  more  than  they 
express,  289:  their  insinuations 
of  error,  292:  in  legal  instru- 
ments, 311 ;  their  ambiguity  in 
statutes.  311,  312;  express  only 
the  relations  of  things,  317;  im- 
perfect signs  of  our  conceptions, 
317,  318,  321;  convey  different 


ideas  to  different  minds.  318, 
319,  320;  denote  but  part  of  an 
object,  320;  their  po\vi-r  in  the 
French  revolution,  349,  350; 
fascination  of  their  study,  307, 
308;  concentrated  poems.  :;09: 
knowledge  embodied  in,  371; 
Arab  in  English,  371 :  ciianges 
in  their  meaning,  374-382 :  their 
degradation,  382-397;  common 
with  curious  derivations,  :j87- 
412;  of  illusive  etymology,  412- 
420;  causes  of  their  corruption, 
412:  Anglicizing  of  foreign, 
412;  their  contradictory  mean- 
ings, 420-423;  origin  of  new, 
428;  legitimate  once  denounced, 
429;  coined  by  poets,  432;  ad- 
vantages of  their  accurate  use, 
430-440;  the  use  of  pet,  444; 
the  coining  of,  425,  432-434. 

Words  without  meaning,  158-170. 

Wordsworth,  lines  from,  251. 

Wotton,  Sir  Plenry,  his  definition 
of  an  ambassadoi',  100. 


Youth  and  Age,  Colei-idge's  lines 
on,  250. 


zero,  419. 


Z. 


CENTRAL  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
University  of  California,  Saji  Diego 


DATE  DUE 

JUN14  1980 

MAR  31  1980 

CI  39 

UCSD  Libr. 

UC  SOUTHERN  REGIOf.A, 


AA    001  140  005    8 


